The Dominion - Montreal

Honouring the Dead, Standing with the Survivors

Tim McSorley — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 10:40:08 +0000

Seventh annual Sisters in Spirit vigil still seeking answers, action for missing and murdered women

MONTREAL—Close to 200 people joined Montreal's seventh annual Sisters in Spirit vigil and march last night. It was one of more than 160 vigils across North America on October 4 in commemoration of the thousands of Native women who have been murdered or gone missing over the past three decades.

Since it was founded in 2005 by Bridget Tolley, an Algonquin woman whose mother was killed when Surete du Quebec officers hit her with their car, organizers of the Sisters in Spirit vigil have argued that government and police need to take the situation of missing and murdered Indigenous women more seriously. Estimates range from 600 (according to police) to more than 3000 (according to researchers and human rights activists) Native women who have faced disappearance or a violent death since the 1980s.

While violence against Indigenous women may have appeared more often in the headlines due to high profile cases like the William Pickton trial in BC, vigil organizer Bianca Mugyenyi said people need to realize that this is a national crisis, where women from across the country find themselves threatened and in danger on a daily basis.

“Our goal is to raise awareness of high rates of violence that Native women face in this country,” said Mugyenyi, who is with Missing Justice, a Native women solidarity group that has helped organize the Montreal vigil since 2009.

Nina Segalowitz, an Innu woman and frontline case worker with abused women, echoed Mugyenyi's concerns. “We've lost a lot of women in Montreal to violence, from partners and ex-partners...While we're here for Native women, I like to think that we're here for all women who are abused simply for being women.”

First Nations women are five times more likely than other sectors of the population to face violence, she said.

Speakers at the vigil pointed to two significant places where action is needed: government action to ensure the safety of Native women, but also transformation and education in society to decrease violence against women in general, and against Native women in particular.

Mugyenyi had particularly harsh criticism for recent actions of the federal government. Budget cuts have led to the significant reduction and elimination of resources meant to combat violence against Native women. One aspect has been the federally funded Sisters in Spirit program, organized by the Native Women's Association of Canada. The federal government provided funding to the program from 2005 until 2011, in order to build a database of information on unsolved cases of missing and murdered Native women. In 2010, the Conservative government announced it would not continue funding the program, and that the group would need to cease operating. The decision came as a blow, since the program had already built profiles of more than 500 cases and was seen as doing effective work.

Instead, the government announced $10 million in funding, mostly for police operations.

Mugyenyi said that this decision, as well as the Conservative government's “tough on crime” stance, will do little to improve the situation of Native women.

“In the case of missing and murdered women, the police are part of the problem,” she said. “They make assumptions, perpetuate stereotypes. Bridget Tolley's mother was killed by the Surete du Quebec. She's been calling for an independent inquiry, outside of the police, which the government has continued to turn down.” In 2001, Tolley's mother was hit by an SQ police car and died. The investigation into her death, which cleared all involved of wrongdoing, was led by the brother of the officer at the wheel of the car.

Sisters in Spirit has been instrumental in researching and recording cases of native women who have been killed or gone missing.

Instead of more police operations, said Mugyenyi, better education around violence towards women and more social services to help women who are in precarious social situations are needed. She also said the government should heed the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in their support of a national inquiry into violence against native women. That call was put out in December 2011, but the federal government has yet to take action.

While government and police actions play an important role, another significant issue that speakers pointed to is the need for more action against sexism and racism in all communities.

Segalowitz added that she was at the vigil not just to honour the women who have died, but also to stand beside the women who have been able to survive and carry on, and because of her three children, whom she hopes will not have to deal with the same issues of violence and abuse.

Irkar Beljars, a Mohawk man who has helped organize the vigil over the past several years, called on the men in the crowd to make sure they pass the word on and tell their friends where they were tonight, and why it is important to raise their voices against violence towards women.

After seven years of vigils, Mugyenyi expressed hopefulness that the message is being heard. “Every year there are more people, media coverage goes up,” she said. “It's encouraging to be here to see so many people come out to honour the lives of missing and murdered women.”

Tim McSorley is an editor with the Media Co-op and a contributor with the Co-op media de Montreal.

Sisters in Spirit 2012

Buffalo Hat Singers

SIS 2012 signs 2

Sisters in Spirit 2012 signs

Turning Around Turcot

Tim McSorley — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:44:52 +0000

New hope for highways on a human scale in Montreal

MONTREAL—After months of protests that captured the imagination of the world, things have quieted down on Montreal streets. But the impacts of the mobilizations, which began as a college-student-led rejection of proposed tuition increases and grew into a social strike, are still echoing throughout the city and the province. Environmentalists, anti-highway activists and community associations are but a few of the groups whose organizing is currently riding the upshot of a new government forced to take positions by ongoing neighbourhood organizing in Montreal and beyond.

"The Liberals had a reign of about nine years and we've seen pretty much the worst things that we’ve seen environment wise," said Bruno Massé, the coordinator of the Réseau Québécois des Groups Écologistes, a Quebec-wide network comprising 60 grassroots environmental groups. "Since the [Parti Québécois] took power, there's been a lot of optimism, but mostly people holding their breath," he said.

By the time the government of Jean Charest called elections on August 1, his government was left with little legitimacy in the eyes of a mobilized public. And while the September 4 election distracted from the popular agenda being set in assemblies in colleges and neighborhoods around Montreal and Quebec, it also marked what student associations called a victory when the incoming Parti Québécois cancelled the proposed fee hike.

Massé said that two big victories are on the horizon for environmental organizers: he expects the Gentilly-2 nuclear power plant to be shut down, and a moratorium to be achieved on fracking to extract shale gas.

The Plan Nord, one of Charest's most controversial policy pieces, is progressing as if nothing is changing, said Massé, though it could still be scrapped or changed since the enabling legislation has not been passed. The Plan Nord proposes the opening up of Quebec's northern territories to increased investment in the energy, mining, forest and wildlife sectors, as well as new transportation and communications infrastructure.

But another victory could be on its way, this time resulting from years of community organizing against freeway expansion. Late last week, Montreal's city council issued a surprise request to the PQ government to go back to the drawing board and re-design the Turcot Interchange so that it is on a human scale and prioritizes public transit.

The Turcot Interchange highway complex is Montreal's (and perhaps Canada’s) most famous spaghetti junction, made up of three separate interchanges that tower above cyclists and pedestrians in the streets below. A steady stream of cars and trucks roll up, around, and back down onto the roadways below. Cranes hover underneath the concrete structures, evidence of construction and maintenance work on the decaying elevated highway system.

The Turcot Interchange was unveiled on April 25, 1967, just in time for the World Exposition in Montreal. Once a stately showpiece of modernity and car culture, today the crumbling Turcot is at the centre of a debate about sustainability, transportation and the future of Montreal. The recent announcement by the City of Montreal follows years of community organizing against a new mega-interchange complex, as proposed by the Charest Liberals.

"Part of the idea of building this interchange was that people would be transporting themselves by car in the city, so it's to provide better car transport infrastructure," said Shannon Franssen, an organizer with Solidarité St. Henri and spokesperson for Mobilisation Turcot, a group formed to organize for transit and against highway expansion. "In the 60s that made sense as a vision...Nowadays we know that's not an efficient way to move around the city," she said.

The Quebec government's proposal would see the Ville-Marie highway enlarged, the Turcot expanded, and Highway 20 moved north onto one of the city's last remaining wetlands, at a price tag of $3 billion. But with the exception of a few new busses, the government plan doesn’t include any public transit.

"We have this opportunity here to make this smaller, more efficient highway interchange that has alternatives," said Franssen in an interview in Montreal. An estimated 70 per cent of the 290,000 vehicles that travel on the interchange every day are commuters. "There are way better ways to transport folks from the West Island to downtown, and most people that are in their cars, going through the interchange, don't want to be in their car."

Opponents of the expansion say its not that the interchange needs to disappear, but that there are alternatives to spending $3 billion to expand the towering highway system, which include an emphasis on rail and other public transit. "We're arguing with very precise proposals for a dedicated bus corridor [for commuters], plus accelerating the investment for the train in the West Island...and review the design to reduce the capacity of the highway," said Dr. Pierre Gauthier, a professor in geography at Concordia University.

Montreal has already demolished one urban interchange, which was on Parc Avenue leading into downtown, with great success. "The old one was this crazy thing and they decided that it was more than what was necessary in the city and so they they kind of dismantled that interchange, there's no tunnels there, and it is a good example of how we could be building things better, and how it has happened before in Montreal," said Franssen.

St. Henri, where Franssen works, is a traditionally working class, Québécois neighbourhood that has been impacted by the mega-highway for decades. It isn't only the daily nuisances of traffic jams and noise. There is, of course, the climate change impacts of the estimated 290,000 vehicles that travel through what are in fact three interchanges commonly known as the Turcot interchange every day. But there are also very real health impacts.

"The public health department has identified it as a risk to one's health to live within 200 metres of a highway where there are so many cars going through," said Franssen. "We hear stories about parents bringing their newborns into the hospital and saying, 'well they're having breathing problems' and this kind of thing, and the hospital, when [the hospital workers] find out that they live where they live, basically say 'well, this is an effect of living there, so that's just the way it is.'"

Public hearings about the highway received over 400 submissions from locals and concerned groups. According to Franssen, 95 per cent of them were against the Quebec government's proposal to rebuild the interchange. These petitions for a smaller interchange and for more public transit were largely ignored by the Quebec government until the city’s announcement last week.

In the face of government indifference, local organizers conducted various campaigns, articulating their own vision for the highway, handing out information, holding occupations and marching in the streets in solidarity with students and against austerity. These constant mobilizations, together with an increasing awareness even among the political class that highway expansion is a road to nowhere, may result in another important victory in the struggle for liveable cities and a healthy planet.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist based between Montreal and Mexico. This piece was written with support from Stop the Pave and was originally published on the Media Co-op.

Turcot

Three ways Quebec can freeze tuition without raising taxes

Tim McSorley — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:51:34 +0000

What the media isn't telling you about government spending in Quebec

MONTREAL—Everything and its opposite has been said about Quebec's historic student strike. Strikers and their vocal supporters have been pitted against hostile opinions from the government and middle class Quebeckers. At the heart of much of the debate is concern that without a tuition fee increase the government will instead raise taxes. As Jonathan Mercier, a government lawyer and father of three, explained recently, he supports the principles behind the student strike, but he simply has no faith that the government of Quebec will not raise taxes, leaving no money in his wallet.

Mercier isn't alone in distrusting the government: According to a July 2012 poll, IPSOS Reid found that 95 per cent of Canadians do not trust their politicians. Combine this lack of trust with a constant squeeze on middle class wallets—debt to disposable income ratio for the average Canadian family hit a new record high this summer of 152 per cent—and you have an explosive situation when a student knocks on your door asking for a freeze on their tuition.

With that in mind, here are three quick and dirty ways for finding $300 million under the Quebec Finance Minister’s pillow, without having to raise taxes:

1. Uncovering corruption leads to lower prices in construction industry

The impact of the provincially appointed Charbonneau Commission into allegations of government corruption has already been felt in municipalities across Quebec. In 2011, Quebec City initially forecast a $170 million budget for its road works and infrastructure repairs. However, following the start of the commission's hearings, the construction companies lowered their prices, offering the same services for $130 million: a 25 per cent “savings.” Investigations into corruption are said to be leading construction companies to cease their collusion. According to its annual budget, the government of Quebec plans to spend over $9 billion on road work and infrastructure over the next few years. Even if prices for the provincial government only fall by half as much, let’s say 10 per cent, that equates to $900 million more in the pockets of taxpayers. Eliminating this “subsidy” to the construction industries, known as “extras,” could finance free university education.

Savings: at least $900 million per year.

2. Stop subsidizing the pollution of mining companies

In its 2012 budget, the government of Quebec included $2.2 billion in environmental debt to account for orphan sites. Orphan sites are toxic waste sites left behind when a mining, gas or petroleum company has finished exploiting its allotted land. The government of Quebec refuses to reveal the real costs of cleaning all contaminated sites, noting only that there are at least 679 contaminated sites and that cleanup costs are pegged at $2.2 billion. When the minister in charge of mines, Serge Simard, was asked who will foot the bill for the cleanup of the mines, he was unambiguous: “For sure, the people of Quebec will be the ones paying. It won't be the Martians paying, it will be the people of Quebec.”

Savings: at least $2.2 billion

3. Rethink or eliminate the Plan Nord

The Plan Nord, which aims to ramp up resource development in the northern 70 per cent of the province, seems to be a perfect demonstration of why taxpayers are stuck with never-ending provincial deficits. Studies show that government officials are making unprecedented and unexpected gifts to mining companies. Before the reform to Quebec mining royalties in 2010, the provincial government received $287 million in royalties from mining companies over a 10-year period. Previously considered one of the most generous royalty programmes on the planet, Quebec has since reformed its system, increasing the rate from 12 to 16 per cent in royalties on profits (but not on total production). Quebec should now, in theory, be receiving $400 million per year from an annual mineral production of $8 billion. Profitable mining companies that were once made to invest in infrastructure, such as roads and ports, have now been told the Quebec government will support them via Plan Nord. Over the next 25 years, the government estimates $82 billion will be spent on the Plan Nord (roughly 50 per cent from Hydro-Quebec, 30 per cent from the government and 20 per cent from companies) generating $14.2 billion. The hidden social and environmental costs would be roughly $6.15 billion. We can therefore expect an $8.45 billion deficit over the next 25 years for the Plan Nord.

Savings:
1. Apply the 16 per cent royalty on total mineral production instead of on profits: $1.28 billion in revenue per year.
2. Require companies to build and maintain their own roads: $2.8 billion in savings over 25 years.
3. Rethink the Plan Nord so that it will be affordable for taxpayers, socially just for First Nations and ecologically sound for Earthlings and Martians: at least $8.45 billion in savings over 25 years.

Luca Palladino is a HEC Business School graduate who studied capitalism to understand the nature of the beast. He studied economics but had to read Adam Smith and Karl Marx in secret because they only taught him math at school. You can follow his work at @lukaesque.

John and the crooks

Red Square Roots

dawn — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 08:11:45 +0000

How austerity underpins social crisis and repression in Quebec and beyond

MONTREAL—Across Montreal little red squares, sprayed on sidewalk corners, drawn into bus stop walls, or pinned to shirts, speak to the historic nature of Quebec's ongoing political crisis sparked by a massive student strike.

 Every evening in Montreal red flags continue to fly, as people armed with a carré rouge, the red felt square symbolizing Quebec's student uprising, join nightly protest starting at place Émilie-Gamelin.

From the cold of winter to the heat of summer, Montreal's streets have been alive with protest in 2012, a battle ground between contrasting social visions.   As a vibrant social movement calls for the government to retreat on moves to hike university tuition fees, people on the streets are also fundamentally questioning the logic of austerity economics.

Protests are riding a political high that is sparking growing international attention, while the Parti Libéral du Québec is mobilizing for a serious push back in mid-August via Law 78.   Police and Sûreté du Québec forces plan to open college and university campuses on strike across Quebec by force, if students, professors and supporters move to protest the controversial legislation on site. This move would threaten to unleash legislated police wrath on the strike, clearly undercutting student assemblies and associations who continue to sustain the strike movement.

Activists are now collectively organizing, through popular assemblies and meetings across Quebec, ways to challenge Law 78 and the legislated attempt to crush the strike movement.

  “La grève est étudiante, la lutte est populaire!”, a slogan roughly translating to, “a student strike, a people's struggle,” illustrates placard signs and banners around the city. It is also a chant often heard in the streets.

Popular opposition toward Law 78 is steadfast, a law that inspired a thousand protests, turning a student strike into the largest social movement in a generation.   Emergency legislation, drafted May 2012 by the Quebec Liberal government, includes restrictions on protest, banning public gatherings inside and around university campuses, while obliging organizers of street demonstrations across Quebec to seek police approval at least eight hours in advance.

 In Quebec and globally, Law 78 has been met by widespread condemnation. Amnesty International states that the bill violates freedoms of speech, assembly and movement. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights openly criticized the bill in a June 2012 speech, saying that it restricts “rights to freedom of association and of peaceful assembly.”

 “At times when governments face a crisis of legitimacy, the state will often resort to repression,” said Aziz Choudry, a professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University.

 “It's important to have historical perspective, in Canada the RCMP spied on and harassed union activists, indigenous people,” said Choudry in an interview with The Dominion. “Today in Quebec there is a movement that has been able to sustain itself for a long period of time and now that movement is facing repression and criminalization. It's really important for us to challenge this but also see it as part of a historic reality.”

 On the streets across Quebec, thousands are joining nightly popular protests against the law, banging pots and pans in casseroles protests, inspired by the cacerolazo grassroots protest tradition, that took root in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and was used more recently during the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina.  

Nightly casseroles protests illustrate how Law 78 pushed more and more people to take to the streets, not only in protest and support for the student strike, but also as a form of voicing wider opposition toward a political and economic system that is increasingly seen as predatory and unjust. 

 “In Quebec there is popular support for the student movement, so now the government is trying to break the movement with repression,” said Rushdia Mehreen, a graduate student at Concordia University and members of the social struggles committee of CLASSE. “Since the strike began there was always physical repression by police at protests, with pepper spray, rubber bullets and physical police assaults, but the students continued, so now the state is utilizing legislation to repress the movement with Law 78.

  “The Quebec government chose repression because there isn't democratic, popular support for their policy to hike tuition fees,” said Mehreen, in an interview with The Dominion. “More broadly in Quebec, people do not support the framework of austerity economics, so repression is now the response to create fear and to try to force these unpopular policies on the population."

  In Quebec the move to hike tuition fees by $1,778 over seven years, representing an 82 per cent increase per student, has been billed by government officials as part of a “cultural revolution” that is now rewriting social policy in Quebec. It's not just students who are feeling the crunch.

In the healthcare sector, the Liberal Government moved to impose a $200-per-year healthcare flat tax, or “user fee”, for all in Quebec. At the same time, the government has moved to gut corporate tax rates, making them among the lowest in the western world.  

Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand describes the policies as an effort to control public finances. But these changes occur in the context of a global drift toward austerity measures, a reality defined by a shift away from collective solutions toward societal problems, via public institutions—policies that place the burden of the ongoing financial crisis on the public sector, rather than the corporate sector, universally recognized to have sparked the current crisis.

  While working to re-engineer Quebec's public institutions, the Quebec Liberals are also pushing Plan Nord, a controversial development plan for the Northern regions of Quebec, inspired in ways by Alberta's tar sands industry, linking economic growth largely on resource extraction and drafted largely without meaningful consultation of the First Nations communities who live in the regions that the northern plan will impact. 

Popular opposition toward Plan Nord on the streets has been serious, with students joining forces with environmental group for Earth Day on April 22, a mass protest with hundreds of thousands on the streets, a key moment in the trajectory of the ongoing protest movement in Quebec. Outside the Salon Plan Nord in April, hundreds of environmental justice activists clashed with riot police. These tense protests marked a political turning point in the student strike mobilization, shifting the focus of street protests from tuition hikes toward a broader systemic critique of Liberal government policies.   

Some ask if the Quebec Liberal government's effort to control or force public institutions toward austerity has been a factor in pushing the party towards losing control.  

“Today in Quebec the government is failing to impose a neo-liberal 'cultural revolution' without force,” explains Guillaume Hébert, researcher at the Institut de recherche et d'informations socio-économiques (IRIS) in Montreal. “And when facing a growing student movement, a historic movement, the imposition of Law 78 is all about imposing an austerity agenda by force, an agenda aiming to commercialize education but also to privatize other public institutions in Quebec.

  “Many, many people in Quebec agree on the universal right to university education, so there is a discord between the neo-liberal model and Quebec's political culture,” Hébert told The Dominion.

“So we are seeing, as in Victoriaville and on many nights in Montreal that austerity policies are being backed and pushed by state force.”

In Victoriaville, the Sûreté du Québec provincial police force fired large amounts of tear gas and multiple rounds of rubber bullets on demonstrators supporting the student strike movement, severely injuring multiple students who traveled in hundreds on buses to protest outside a Liberal Party meeting. One student, Maxence Valade, lost an eye during the police attack.   

Questions are being raised on the streets of Quebec about the limits of democracy today in the context of a historic student strike. On top of the injuries in Victoriaville, journalists at Concordia University TV have also been repeatedly pepper-sprayed and hit by police batons while filming on the front-lines at nightly protests in Montreal.

  As political commentators shift their focus to the election campaign in Quebec, discussions inside the strike movement are now turning toward the limits for activists and social movements to express themselves in an era of austerity.

  “Democratic expression has always been limited and restrained in Quebec and Canada,” said Eric Shragge, professor at the School of Community and Public Affairs at Concordia University. “Liberal democracies are liberal to a certain point, once popular movements cross a threshold and move toward mass mobilization, repression is administered.

  “There is always a contingency plan of state violence and repression when people collective refuse the neo-liberal economic model that has been pushed for decades now,” said Shragge. “People are pushed to believe they need to find individual solutions to collective problems and that the market will bring solutions. Clearly this isn't the case and when people refuse this logic collectively on the streets, like we are seeing in Quebec, the state will eventually come in to bash heads.”

  The austerity agenda the Conservative Government is pursuing in the rest of Canada amplifies the current crisis in Quebec in different ways.   Although Quebec politicians question specifics of Canada's Conservative policies—namely the expansion of federal prisons—fundamentals of both governments' policies in relation to sustaining adequate funding for public institutions, like universities and hospitals, are similar.  

Beyond boosting policing and military budgets, the Conservative Government has cut funding in the name of 'balancing books', mirroring economic language of Quebec politicians and trends of austerity policies globally. For example, a watchdog organization responsible for monitoring Canada's spy agency CSIS was eliminated in the 2012 budget. This means less oversight for an agency with a long history of spying on and tracking the organizing efforts of social movements.

  At the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), people are drawing a parallel between repression against the student movement in Quebec via Law 78 and the back-to-work legislation imposed on CUPW this past fall.

  “In Canada, repressive legislation is targeting the right to strike, imposing heavy, heavy fines on unions for fighting back and undercutting collective bargaining,” said Aalya Ahmad, a writer and activist in Ottawa who works at CUPW.

  “Imposing working conditions and wages on workers through back-to-work legislation, first with the postal workers, then with Air Canada workers, is an attack on civil liberties,” said Ahmad, in an interview with The Dominion. “In Quebec Law 78 is part of this broader political environment, illustrating an incredible attack on students and professors, it's essential for unions and people in Canada to support the struggle in Quebec against Law 78 because our struggles are connected.”

  At the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) in Toronto, activist John Clark argues that both the conflict on the streets and scale of the protests in Quebec only signal the beginning of a larger conflict in society.   

“What is now happening is that post 2008 crisis and with the system hovering on the edge of a toilet bowl, the pace of austerity is being massively accelerated,” said Clark in an interview with The Dominion. “In the end there are only two ways to regulate a population, you can either meet their needs within limits, or get out the billy clubs.”  

“In Canada, the cutting edge of the resistance to the austerity agenda has come-up in Quebec. Even observing from the outside we see how shocking and unprecedented the repression of the state has become,” said Clark. “But I think Quebec is only the starting point, for both the resistance and repression, this will spread from coast to coast.”  

“The scale of this economic crisis is only beginning to assert itself and the austerity agenda is only getting started,” said Clark. “There is going to be a profound conflict in society in the near future and we need to be ready.”

  Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based writer, musician and community activist who contributes to the Media Co-op, follow him on Twitter at Spirodon.

No à Loi 78!

For Their Own Good

taramichelle — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 10:29:26 +0000

Ontario’s legal legacy of the "moral" woman

MONTREAL—In 2004, Velma Demerson’s autobiography, Incorrigible was published as a testament to the degradation, abuse and torture of women incarcerated between the ages of 16 to 35 under Ontario’s Female Refuges Act, or FRA (1919-1958). She writes: "The seizure, stigma and family turmoil that ensued from confining a woman in prison passes down through the generations."

In the 1930s, female adolescents like Demerson were liberating themselves and growing up at a time when customs were coming apart. “Imagine what it was like at the turn of the century, where for the first time, women are starting to flock to cities like Toronto and are experiencing autonomy, they are mobile, earning their own wages and are able to purchase some degree of autonomy...” states Dr Amanda Glasbeek, professor at York University and expert on feminist criminology and Canadian women's legal history.

In 1991, Demerson was invited to speak at an annual general meeting hosted by the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS)—a federation of member societies who work with and on behalf of marginalized, victimized, criminalized, and imprisoned women and girls.

Demerson spoke of her incarceration at age 18, in 1939, at the infamous Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Females in Toronto. At the time, Demerson was a white, working-class teenager, living in a common-law relationship with Harry Yip, a Chinese national. Demerson was pregnant with his child when she was brought to court by her father, who opposed the union on racist grounds. Demerson was charged with being “incorrigible”—an offence not found in the Criminal Code. The judge denied her plea to marry Harry and remanded her to be sentenced under section 15 of the Female Refuges Act.

Dr Glasbeek, the author of Moral Regulation and Governance in Canada: History, Context and Critical Issues, explains, “‘Incorrigible’ meant that if a woman was considered defiant of authority she could be brought to court with no evidence required.”

The intrusion of the law in the form of the FRA was symptomatic of a broader movement in the 1930s to try to contain and detain women from themselves—political and legal reformers saw women as “trading in their virtues for what they called a good time,” explains Dr Glasbeek. As a result, this kind of so-called protective justice was deployed to discipline women from stepping out of their role and was deemed for their own good. “The concern was very specific, increasingly the blame for sexual liberties got transferred to women—and women were not deemed the best judges of their own sexuality,” states Dr Glasbeek.

After uncovering legal and medical archives and old newspapers that prompted her own investigation, Demerson stated, “I found that [under FRA] a neglected girl could enter an industrial or training school without appearing before a magistrate. She could be transferred to an industrial refuge and again to the Mercer Reformatory. A girl could wind up in a barred cell without having been in court.”

It just so happened that, at the time, the Canadian Social Hygiene Council was involved in promoting Eugenics as a mechanism for social reform and racial improvement. According to CAEFS, this resulted in the casual round up of thousands of women for incarceration after legislation passed in 1918 under the Prevention of Venereal Diseases Act (VD Act)—a campaign brought on by the Council, later known as the Health League of Canada.

The VD Act granted government-appointed doctors the authority to incarcerate women depicted as promiscuous and assumed to have contracted a venereal disease, women raped by a family member (or accused of incest), women feared to be queer or those suspected of eloping by her parents.

Government-funded agencies such as the Associated Children’s Aid Society of Ontario (OACAS), a program that began operating in 1920, targeted women living out of wedlock, confiscating their children as wards of the state.

Doctors used these women in custody to assess new drugs being developed. Velma’s pregnancy was threatened when she was given pills now identified as Pheniramine, Sulphanilamide and Dagenan—all forms of antibiotic and antibacterial drugs that have heavy sedative effects. Dagenan is no longer used to treat humans.

Women who displayed no symptoms of VD were sent to the Queen Street Asylum (also referred to as “999 Queen Street” and now the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) for fever treatment; some were placed inside a cabinet or “fever machine” where the temperature was raised to over 105 degrees for long lengths of time.

Demerson’s newborn son suffered from severe skin disease as a result of the experiments. He was removed from the Mercer without consent from Demerson, who writes in her book: “What can one say in the brutal atmosphere of the Mercer where each person is obsessed with her own personal trauma?”

Dr Edna Guest, a physician at the Mercer Reformatory from 1921 to 1939, was a distinguished member of the Canadian Social Hygiene Council and contributed to the Social Health Journal, where she strongly, publicly supported the “sterilization of the unfit.”

Dr Glasbeek confirms that the medical experiments conducted on "incorrigible" women and Mercer inmates by Dr Guest and others were “not far in theory and technology from the Eugenics movement” of the 1930s in Nazi Germany.

Demerson recounts one such experiment: “I watch as she [Dr Guest] opens and closes a metal box...Suddenly I feel a pain so encompassing that I lose all control. My hands tear loose and I flail about...then with one swift motion, the doctor applies a burning liquid.”

Dr Guest was removed from her position with the Prisons and Reformatories Department on December 15, 1939—after carrying out a procedure that resulted in the death of an unidentified young female patient. CAEFS has found increasing evidence that many girls died from drug and fever treatments, but their deaths have not been recorded, partially due to the cover-up of medical records.

Ashley Smith's suicide on October 19, 2007, at the Grand Valley Institution for Women signals a nostalgic flashback to the abusive history of morality sentencing against Canadian women. Nineteen-year-old Smith strangled herself after a one-month sentence for "disruptive behaviour" that stretched into four years of incarceration, spent entirely in solitary confinement.

Although CAEFS was primarily responsible for the repeal of the offensive provisions of the FRA in 1958, women and girls continue to suffer abuse in Canadian federal penitentiaries. Ashley Smith died within the law and we learn from Velma’s memoirs that during her confinement at the Mercer, she too often resolved to die: “My deviation from normal behavior has undoubtedly been reported. I am being watched, more so since my escape, apparent attempted suicide, and hysterical screaming. I am only a step away from madness.”

On Novemeber, 23, 2011, Howard Sapers, Correctional Investigator of Canada, spoke at an open seminar at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Law. He concluded by stating,“Ashley Smith’s experience in federal custody was one marked by missed opportunities. Her behaviour was primarily viewed as requiring security, as opposed to therapeutic interventions. Responses to incidents of self-harm were inconsistent and often contrary to her needs...while some improvements have been made, the accountability and governance structures that contributed to Ashley’s untimely death are still largely in place today.”

Sapers's report was a lengthy response to heavy criticism from human rights groups, including CAEFS, and after the public release of a ghastly video recording of Ashley’s suicide while in federal custody at the Grand Valley Institution for Women on October 19, 2007.

This year marks 10 years since Demerson finally cleared her name at age 81. At a national press conference on October 7, 2002, after 60 years of virtually no response or official apology, a negotiated settlement with the Ontario Government was reached and the Female Refuges Act was declared unconstitutional.

Demerson has been a tireless advocate for women illegally confined across Canada and now, in her 90s, she resides in Toronto. She received the JS Woodsworth Award for anti-racism from the Ontario NDP Caucus in 2002, on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

While Smith’s case renewed public interest in community-based alternatives for addressing women’s needs, Demerson and countless other women continue to live with the legacy of the FRA—a law that engendered contradictions, double standards and gender oppressions within a patriarchal culture that saw itself as a force for social change.

Dalia Merhi is a Montreal-based Arab artist, writer and citizen journalist involved in grassroots struggles for social justice. She is an editor with the Media Co-op.

Velma and Family

Plan to Pipe Tar Sands to East Coast Protested

dawn — Fri, 25 May 2012 09:59:40 +0000

Activists interrupt National Energy Board's hearing on Enbridge's proposal to reverse flow of Line 9 pipe

TORONTO—Environmental justice protestors temporarily shut down a hearing into a proposal to have tar sand oil piped through Ontario. The hearing took place place in London, Ontario, on Wednesday.

The three day hearing, held by the National Energy Board (NEB), is examining a proposal by Enbridge to reverse the flow of an existing pipeline (Line 9), which currently carries imported overseas oil west. Enbridge wants to instead use the pipeline to bring oil east. However activists are concerned that this will allow Enbridge to bring tar sands to the east coast for export to Europe.

After entering the hearing, protestors employed the People's Mic, where the crowd would echo back whatever was said by a spokesperson in order to project their voices. After a few minutes of the People's Mic commencing, most other attendees at the hearing exited the room. The NEB hearing was shut down for approximately an hour.

The spokesperson who led the Peoples Mic was arrested and then removed from the room. She was later released with a ticket for trespass.

The protestors raised concerns about the environmental impacts of the Alberta tar sands, the possibility of a spill in Ontario and the lack of prior and informed consent being sought from First Nations in Ontario.

"Six Nations rights already have been violated in this review process," stated Wes Elliot, a resident of Six Nations in a press release. "Free, prior, and informed consent is not a factor in these hearings."

Line 9 cuts through the Haldimand Tract, land which was deeded to Six Nations in 1784.

"We also must object to the illegitimate and anti-democratic conduct of the officials who are fast-tracking this review," said Elliot in the release.

Following the protest, demonstrators held what they dubbed an unofficial "People's Hearing on the Tar Sands Pipeline."

"The current framework of the National Energy Board hearings does not allow us to draw connections between tar sands extraction, toxic refineries and upgraders, and various other downstream consequences," said Taylor Flook a member of Occupy Toronto who attended the event in London. "The People's Hearing was arranged as a more open forum, where anyone can share any of their concerns about relevant issues."

"The tar sands industry is attempting to build as many pipelines as they can," said Flook. "We should not accept the fast-tracking of these projects," she said. "No tar sands operations should proceed without the consent of everyone who may be impacted."

As the extraction of tar sands from Alberta has increased, a series of new pipeline projects have emerged to bring the dirty oil to refineries and ports across Canada and the US.

The Harper government has loudly endorsed these projects. But following a series of protests against TransCanada's XL pipeline, which would send tar sands oil south, President Obama delayed approval for a section of the project that goes through the United States until after US elections, which will take place in November.

Opposition by First Nations and environmentalists to Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would bring oil from Alberta to the BC coast for shipment overseas, has garnered attention across Canada.

Protestors worry the Line 9 Reversal could be rushed through before there is time to build awareness and opposition to the pipeline. But they say many of the concerns with the Northern Gateway Pipeline also apply to the Line 9 reversal.

The Line 9 approval process is taking place in two phases. The London hearing deals with bringing oil from Sarnia, Ontario, to Westover, Ontario. The second phase regards oil transport from Westover to Montreal, Quebec.

Tim Groves is an investigative journalist and regular contributor to the Toronto Media Co-op, where the original version of this article appeared.

Protest against Line 9 reversal

Quebec Government Looks to "Lock-Out" Striking Students

dawn — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:25:09 +0000

Libs threaten to suspend classes unless pickets lifted

Editor's note: Bill 78 was introduced in the National Assembly late Thursday night, and goes even further than what is laid out below. To read the bill itself, click here [PDF, French]. Check the Montreal Media Co-op for updates and more details.

MONTREAL—After fourteen weeks of student strikes in Quebec, the provincial Liberals announced Wednesday they will introduce a law that would suspend the rest of this semester at colleges and universities if striking students do not stop holding picket lines or enforcing strike votes.

Bill 78, "A Law Allowing Students to Receive the Education Provided by the School Which They Attend", was introduced in the National Assembly in Quebec City after deadline late Thursday night.

Student representatives were fast to denounce the proposed regulation on Wednesday night, calling it a "lock-out" and saying it will only add "fuel to the fire."

"Tonight, the government spit in the face of a generation...We will remember how we were treated tonight for a long time," said Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, co-spokesperson for the Enlarged Coalition of the Association for a Solidarity Among Student Unions (CLASSE), at a press conference.

As the government's intentions became clear, an array of voices spoke out against the government using legislating to deal with the conflict, including the Quebec Bar Association, and even a group of students which is actively mobilizing in favor of the tuition fee increase.

Across Québec, over 155,000 students remain on strike at 14 colleges and 11 universities. Since the government made its latest offer to students, some 325,000 students have voted against it. It is the longest student strike in Quebec and Canadian history, launched in opposition to the provincial government's plan to increase tuition fees by 82 per cent over seven years.

Wednesday's proposal from the government came in two parts:

First, at schools where students are on strike, students, administrators and teachers must come to an agreement that would allow any student who wishes to return to class—even those whose associations have voted in favor of the strike—to be able to do so. This requires putting an end to all pickets lines or any other disruptive tactics used to ensure the strike vote is respected. If such an agreement is reached, classes will continue normally for the remainder of the semester.

For those schools where such an agreement is not reached, classes will be suspended immediately, and will resume in August, with each school taking on the task of determining what the schedule should look like. The example of the Université de Montréal has been given, where winter semester classes are being suspended until mid-August. They will then run until the end of September. The Fall semester will begin at the start of October—a month late—and finish in mid-January.

The second part of the proposed law will serve to "guarantee the right to education," according to a government press release. It is believed that this means the government will introduce methods to enforce the ban on picket lines, possibly through major fines. The exact details will only be revealed when the bill is introduced in the National Assembly on Thursday night.

Following the announcement, over a thousand people took to the streets of Quebec City, while up to another 20,000 people marched in Montreal.

The effect of the law, according to CLASSE, is essentially the same as a lock-out: at schools where students are still on strike, they either stop enforcing picket lines - eliminating any power that the strike may have - or they will see classes suspended, removing the element that they are striking against.

"This is a lockout, in the end, because it stops students from exercising their democratic rights in general assemblies," said Jeanne Reynolds, CLASSE's co-spokesperson.

The Quebec Federation of University Students and the Quebec Federation of College Students also spoke out soon after the government announcement. They said that they are already preparing to launch a legal challenge against the legislation, should it be adopted. The Liberal party has a majority of seats in the National Assembly, so there is little doubt it will pass.

The proposed law comes as tensions have continued to rise on campuses.

As the strike continues, more and more students have turned to the courts to seek injunctions allowing them to return to class, even if their student associations have voted by a majority to strike. In most cases, these injunctions have been approved. Thought student unions are officially recognized under Quebec law, their right to collectively strike is not. Therefore the courts and the government see participation in the strike as a personal choice. The result is that if one student out of several hundred - or in some cases, out of thousands - requests an injunction to return to class, they have received it.

While the right of students to strike is not legislated, it has been accepted as a practice in the past.

As court injunctions multiply, striking students have taken action to protect the legitimacy of their strike votes. The result has been hard picket lines and classroom disruptions. In response, both local and provincial police have been dispatched to campuses, ratcheting up tension and resulting in arrests, injuries (often from batons), and tear gas and pepper spray being used.

"Each [member of the National Assembly] who votes in favor of this law will have to live with consequences," said Reynolds. "Government intransigence has already seriously injured individuals."

CLASSE has called for a major demonstration in Montreal on May 22, two months after some 300,000 marched against the tuition fee increase, to show that the opposition remains.

An extended version of this article first appeared in the Montéal Media Co-op. Tim McSorley is a journalist and an editor member of the Media Co-op.

Night March in Montreal

Quebec Student Strike Marches Into Eleventh Week

Tim McSorley — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:37:04 +0000

Fifteen thousand take to Montreal streets as Quebec government plays semantics, blocks negotiations

MONTREAL—It didn't take long; as always, the consensus among the media came quickly: "Downtown turns into battlefield," "Another demonstration goes sour," "Montreal student demonstration turns violent," "Violence breaks out during student protest"...

At the end of a day where 15,000 people took to the streets, a day that saw the provincial government play the worst kind of politics during negotiations with student representatives, you'd be hard-pressed to get any of that from the night's headlines.

Also invisible from those opening lines were any mention of police actions—actions which, if you were watching the live stream from CUTV, checking out clips on Youtube, or even following nearly any Twitter feed (let alone if you were actually at the protest)—did more to set off tensions than anything protesters did two nights ago.

The events of April 26 were set in motion by Education Minister Line Beauchamp's announcement that she was expelling the Coalition Large de l'Association pour une Solidarite Syndicale Etudiante from the negotiating session, which were meant to find a resolution to the 11-week-old student strike that has swept the province.

CLASSE represents 50 per cent of the 180,000 students on strike and was largely responsible for launching the strike in the first place. It has also been a constant thorn in the side of the government, organizing the most radical acts of civil disobedience and maintaining a firm line demanding the continuation of the province's tuition fee freeze.

Why were they expelled? After the coalition adopted a clear position against violence towards people, but encouraged civil disobedience, Minister Beauchamp demanded that CLASSE agree to a 48-hour truce for negotiations. During this time, the union would be allowed to organize traditional protests (which it did Wednesday afternoon), but not engage in economic disruption. While CLASSE did not have a mandate to sign a truce, it did state that it had no disruptive actions planned for the next 48 hours.

The Federation des Etudiants Universitaire du Quebec as well as the Federation des Etudiants Collegial du Quebec (FEUQ and FECQ) had already previously spoken out against "violent actions," including acts of vandalism and civil disobedience.

On Monday at 4pm, all three associations sat down with government representatives for the first time since the strike began.

Less than 40 hours later though, it was all over.

Since the start of the strike, CLASSE has maintained a website featuring a Google calendar that showed all student actions across the province, including those that involved actions that the government defines as disruptive or violent. This didn't appear to be a problem to start the truce, but it did serve as the excuse to end it. The ostensible reason was a march last Tuesday night that was announced on the Google calendar included at least one count of property destruction (a broken window), and confrontation with police, resulting in five arrests.

Clearly looking for a pretext to attempt once again to split the tuition freeze movement and to marginalize the association with the most radical—and persistent—membership, Minister Beauchamp took to the airwaves at 2pm Wednesday, announcing that CLASSE was expelled from the negotiations. Within several minutes, the other two federations walked away in solidarity.

A protest had already been called a week earlier for Wednesday night, and the government's arbitrary discussion to cut short negotiations—before, by most accounts, they had even really started—led to people understandably being angry and looking for a way to express their anger.

As Daniel Crespo, one of the organizers of last night's demonstration, told Cyberpresse:

«Évidemment on souhaite une manif énergique. Calme, c'est pas le mot...En ce moment, je crois que le sentiment qui se vit au sein des étudiant-e-s c'est la colère. Alors le calme, je ne crois pas qu'on en ait.»

"Obviously, we're hoping for an energetic demo. Calm isn't the word...Right now, I think the feeling students have is anger. So 'calm'? I don't think we have any."

That said, I have been in the middle of much angrier marches than what hit Montreal last night.

Fifteen thousand people were in the streets last night. Fifteen thousand who were fed up with a government that earlier in the day essentially spit in the face of the student strike movement, demonstrating the same condescension, arrogance and rejectionism that has characterized their approach to this movement, one of the largest social movements in the history of not just Quebec, but of Canada.

And despite all this anger, it was mostly channeled through chanting and speeches. All it took though was a few paint balloons and six broken windows before 15,000 people were announced illegal. Targeted for property destruction were banks, Loto-Quebec and a military recruitment centre: not random targets, but symbols of the government and the economic powers which are behind the push for higher tuition fees and with them higher debt. When the government refuses to negotiate in good faith for over two months, and slams the door when negotiations finally begin, is it any wonder that people would turn their frustrations on the symbols of that government and those who back them?

The response of police was unannounced and muscled. I was just a few metres from where the first percussion grenade went off, in the middle of the crowd, and I feel confident saying that the use of these weapons came before most—if anyone—in the streets knew that the march had been declared an illegal assembly. It was only after the crowd scattered that a voice was heard over the police loudspeaker announcing that the march was illegal. And looking to accounts posted on social media, I'm definitely not alone in that assessment. By the time the announcement was heard, police were already forcing their way into the crowd, separating it, with small groups of people scattering in all directions near the corner of Peel and Ste-Catherine.

From other parts of the march have come reports of police on horses charging crowds, excessive use of pepper spray and gas, batoning and tear gassing. It was only after this excessive intervention that the more aggressive tactics—a car lit on fire, more windows smashed, rocks thrown at police—took place.

Some will clearly argue that once a single window is broken, the law is broken and police have every right to intervene. But can six broken windows justify the police aggression documented on Wednesday night? And if six broken windows can make 15,000 people targetable for dispersion and arrest, then what does a tear gas cannister to the chest, or a concussion grenade to the eye, or a baton to the head or ribs, or a car ramming through a crowd equal? All are clearly more dangerous to the health and safety of individual people: police aren't taking on objects when they aggress, they are taking on flesh and blood.

When all was done—around 1am—85 people were arrested (70 in a mass arrest near St-Dominique and des Pins at the very end), accounts of police brutality were innumerable on social media, and students and supporters were vowing to fight on.

This morning, Quebec Premier Jean Charest was once again denouncing student violence as the obstacle of continued negotiation, playing out the same tired lines he and Minister Beauchamp have had on repeat for weeks. Tired lines that have, and will, do nothing to end this conflict.

Tim McSorley is an editor with The Dominion and a member of the Montreal Media Co-op.

This article was originally published by the Montreal Media Co-op.

April 25 night march in Montreal 1

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Red Squares Sweep Montreal

Tim McSorley — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:10:38 +0000

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest tuition hikes in Quebec

MONTREAL—On March 22nd, over 250,000 people marched on the streets of Montreal, making it possibly the largest demonstration in the province's history—comparable in numbers to the February 2003 march against the looming war in Iraq.

People came from across the province to denounce the 75-per-cent increase in tuition fees over five years to be implemented by the provincial Liberals. Premier Jean Charest has said that the increase is meant to ensure students pay their fair share, and has repeatedly stated that the government's decision is final.

The tens of thousands in the crowd, and who continue to support the strike, are hoping to call his bluff. The strike has been ongoing since early February, and shows no signs of stopping: in the days following this march, actions across the province have multiplied.

The students have summoned a broad range of support for their movement. Those on the streets of Montreal include unions, community organizations, teachers, grandparents, parents, high school students, and many others.

While Charest and Education Minister Line Beauchamp claim students are isolated in their demands and are up against a silent majority, those in the crowd—and many of those standing on the sidewalks as the procession stretched by them —clearly feel otherwise.

Tim McSorley is an editor with The Dominion and a member of the Montreal Media Co-op.

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CBC misrepresenting Quebec student strike?

Tim McSorley — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:22:52 +0000

Coverage of yesterday's demo leaves more questions than answers

MONTREAL—CBC coverage of yesterday's Quebec student protests in downtown Montreal was driven by a painfully obvious bias against the student strike.

Across Quebec, over 55,000 students are currently on strike to protest Quebec government plans to raise post-secondary tuition fees by $1,625 over the next five years.

News reports via CBC yesterday, when 15,000 students marched in Montreal, consistently failed to scrutinize violent police actions against striking students, and the station's coverage bent towards the austerity-driven logic of the Quebec government's policy to hike tuition fees.

CBC television cameras and reporters were on the ground yesterday to cover the massive student protest but failed to convey the real story, missing the full message of the student protesters and misreporting facts on police actions.

CBC News Now host Reshmi Nair's live national commentary on the student protest is important to highlight.

In this clip Nair describes live footage from Montreal via Radio Canada, broadcast as thousands of students, who had been marching throughout downtown all afternoon, converged around Montreal's Jacques Cartier Bridge, leading to a temporary blocking of bridge traffic.

Montreal riot police were on location and began forcefully clearing student protesters from the bridge and surrounding public streets. As police move on the protest, using batons and pepper spray against students carrying protest signs, Nair announces that the "police are fighting back."

Police were "fighting back" against what exactly?

"Fighting back" with pepper spray against a widely popular student protest?

Is employing batons and peppery spray against young students holding placards justified?

Certainly more balanced ways for CBC to report on unfolding events were possible.

Unfortunately this example points to larger systemic failures in CBC's coverage of the current Quebec student strike.

A lead article on CBC.ca gave the first quotes and focus in the report to a few individual students voicing support for tuition hikes and opposition to the strike. Also, this CBC post does not quote a single student participating in the strike, failing to document one voice from the thousands protesting in downtown Montreal streaming past multiple on-location CBC reporters.

Additionally, CBC coverage has widely focused on comparing Quebec tuition fees to the rest of Canada, an argument that misses the Quebec specific context to the protests.

Key historical events central to the current protests, like the major Quebec-wide student strike in 1996, which featured mass street protests that lead to an almost decade-long freeze on tuition hikes in Quebec, is largely being excluded from CBC coverage. Without clear facts on past strikes—collective student action that secured relatively lower tuition fees in Quebec—CBC is failing to provide critical context to the current story.

Students across Quebec are motivated by victories of past strikes like the protests in 1996, but also the 2005 strike when students confronted an attempt by Jean Charest’s Liberal government to slash $103 million from bursaries granted to students. Again in 2005 Quebec students successfully forced the Quebec government to back-down after months of street protests and direct actions.

CBC is also failing to address broader questions on increasingly inaccessible university education across Canada, an issue that current Quebec protests should inspire people across Canada to consider.

Tuition fees are going up coast-to-coast, rising in many cases to levels that make post-secondary education inaccessible for many, a reality illustrated in a recent study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on university education in BC. Is this a reality that Quebec should move toward?

In a CBC live report from Montreal yesterday, reporter Dan Halton was equipped with statistics on tuition fees from across Canada, listing off the differences in tuition across the country. In doing so, he completely failed to address the central issue that Quebec students are striking to fight for: sustaining an accessible post-secondary education system.

"As it stands now Quebec has the lowest tuition fees in the country," declared Halton, finishing off the report, missing the broader point of the protest.

Implied by the CBC reporting that compares Quebec tuition fees to the rest of Canada is that Quebec students should accept proposed tuition fee hikes, given that people in the rest of Canada are paying more for post-secondary studies.

If fewer and fewer people in Quebec or Canada can access university education due to tuition hikes, increasingly a fact today, what impacts will that reality have on the collective social health?

Key to the current student strike in Quebec is a broader political struggle for accessible or even free university education as a political principal rooted in social justice.

Certainly governments are able to find billions of dollars for military spending, like the controversial billions the Conservative government is moving to spend on fighter jets, so why is the financing for more accessible or even free public universities not being explored?

CBC coverage on the Quebec student strike seems to completely side step more meaningful questions about the direction of post-secondary education in Quebec and in Canada.

Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based musician and writer who contributes to the Media Co-op. Stefan is on twitter @spirodon

This article was originally published by the Co-op média de Montréal

Student strike Montreal 2012

The Honorable Voices of Four Women Killed in Kingston

Tim McSorley — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:21:20 +0000

Reflections on the Shafia murder trial

TORONTO—Somewhere in the calm setting of an Islamic cemetery in Laval, Quebec, lie four headstones belonging to four women; all members of a single family. Neatly arranged next to each other, they share similar color, style and design. A Farsi gender-specific religious title for the deceased (Marhoome) is prefixed to their names. One verse of Koran, in Arabic, decorates all four gravestones: “Yea, enter thou My Heaven!” But it was their mortal lives, the very hellish existence that they had to endure, which is more telling. Who were these people? And how did they, all originally from Afghanistan, end up buried, thousands of kilometers away, in the serene surroundings of a town in Quebec?

The primary details of the case were always clear from the outset. In Summer 2009, three sisters aged 13, 17, 19, and their 52-year old stepmother, were found drowned in a car in the depths of the Rideau Canal. It was always unlikely that it was an accident that had led them.

Now, we know much more. The police investigation led to the largest trial in Kingston's history; it took over three months, was conducted in English, French and Persian, and involved summoning 58 witnesses. The accused were the parents and brother of the three murdered sisters. Over the course of the trial, those in the courtoom were able to form a picture not only of the gruesome murder, but of the real lives of Geeti, Sahar, Zainab and Rona.

In the last days of January 2012, the jury returned a guilty verdict for all three accused on four counts of first-degree murder. Police uncovered damning statements, primarily from Mohammad Shafia, the patriarch and murderer-in-chief of this plot, which recorded no sorrow.

But as Shafia’s statements fill the newspapers, what we don't hear is the story of the four victims. Shafia said that they had to be murdered because of their "treason" in supposedly violating his "honor", and that of Islam. What he saw as betrayal, however, was a brilliant story of resistance and expression.

A breathtaking exhibit in this trial was a journal kept by Rona Mohammad Amir, 52, the first wife of Shafia, who was discarded for her infertility and later murdered along with the three children of the second wife. Written in a beautiful Persian prose, it describes an educated woman, who was just 20 when the 1979 revolution signaled an era in which a proliferation of woman's rights, and other social progressive policies, took place in Afghanistan. The Kabul in which she spent her youth was called "Paris of the East", a city with a young female population, known both for their university degrees and liberal fashion sensibilities. Her own polygamous father, a retired colonel, had welcomed the waves of modernization. Rona could wear whatever she wanted and was fond of cheering for her favorite basketball teams in the stadiums. Those days ended in 1981 with an arranged marriage to a young man from a rich family, who gave her an extravagant wedding ceremony at Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel.

One would need a novel to delve more into the story of how this ‘family’ found new members; how it traveled around the world to Pakistan, India, the UAE, Australia and finally Canada; how the very-rich Shafia (whose business included buying a shopping centre in Montreal for two million dollars) decided to run his family according to his own sick notion of “Islam,” a notion that (as Kurdish-Iranian Feminist scholar, Shahrzad Mojab testified) is discarded by millions of Muslims around the world as a backward tribal code that has nothing to do with the religion.

Never resting, the eldest girl Zainab, 19, made recurring attempts to escape with a Pakistani boy whom she loved were not tolerated. Sahar, 17, loved nothing like taking cellphone pictures of herself and her large beautiful eyes. And Geeti, 13, never got a chance to go beyond her first teen year.

These voices of resistance are the true honorable voices in this story, a story which, when finally told, will defy all clichés about Afghan women. Both those that the patriarch Shafia had in mind, and those apparent in the sensationalized racist accounts that have filled the newspapers in this country.

Arash Azizi has spent countless hours covering the Shafia case for Shahrvand, a Toronto-based Persian publication.

This article was originally published by the Toronto Media Co-op.

Shafia

Saying No to CSIS

Tim McSorley — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:10:14 +0000

Dozens of groups launch campaign to not co-operate with Canadian spy agency

MONREAL—Nearly 70 groups across Canada have joined a campaign to no longer co-operate with the work of Canada's national spy agency, and are calling on others to join them.

The organizations represent a broad swath of society, covering such a diversity of issues as migrant rights, anti-war organizing, women's rights, social welfare, international solidarity groups, unions and community media organizations. As representatives from several organizations laid out at a press conference in Montreal on Sunday, they share the belief that the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) targets political organizations in Canada and sows fear and suspicion each time they knock on someone's door.

Coalition groups are urging that their members not interact with CSIS agents should they be approached. This includes answering questions or even listening to what the agents have to say. Legally, Canadian citizens can refuse to speak or even listen to CSIS agents; for others, the coalition suggests only interacting with CSIS with a lawyer present.

"Visits [by CSIS] are meant to create psychological profiles, to instill distrust and to create tensions within groups and communities,” said Marie-Ève Lamy, a spokesperson for the People's Commission Network, which has spearheaded this campaign. Lamy added that the coalition believes visits from CSIS agents also aim to aggravate divisions among groups and individuals, discourage participation in social movement, isolate individual activists or community members – actions that do not actually make people any safer.

The idea for the coalition came about when members of the People's Commission Network (PCN), which organizes around questions of abuse in Canada's anti-terror laws, began hearing a growing number of accounts of unannounced visits by CSIS agents to people's homes in the lead-up to the Vancouver Olympics and the G20 meeting in Toronto, both held in 2010.

While the PCN and other organizations were already familiar with CSIS' tactics—visits from the spy agency were nothing new—the renewed and more widespread visits caused concern, especially since stories were surfacing of CSIS agents appearing at people's workplaces, and questioning family members and neighbours of people involved in anti-Olympic and anti-G20 organizing.

Such visits can be destabilizing and frightening, said Lamy. "People don't know their rights towards secret services, given that all their activities are secret. From that came the idea of a community notice suggesting complete non-collaboration if visited by CSIS."

Now two years later, while the visits have diminished in frequency, their impacts remain. Representatives from Montreal's South Asian Women's Community Centre (SAWCC), migrant rights group Solidarity Across Borders, Tadamon! (which focuses on international solidarity in the Middle East, particularly with Palestinians), and the Central Committee of Metropolitan Montreal of the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux, the largest regional council of Quebec's second largest union, all spoke about how they are advising members to no longer collaborate with CSIS agents.

"We feel that CSIS is preying on our community's insecurities, vulnerabilities,” said Dolores Chew, of the SAWCC. “The countries we come from already have a tradition where people feel they have no other option but to comply with police and the authorities. and we know from our experience that CSIS uses fear, sowing seeds of mistrust, turning people one against the other."

That history of sowing divisions has been apparent for decades in the labor movement, according to Francis Lagacé of the CSN. Canadian security agencies have had a history of infiltrating labor and social movements, he said, pointing to Marc-André Boivin who infiltrated and spied on the CSN for 15 years for the RCMP and CSIS, as well as the spy agency's targeting of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers in the lead up to the 1991 postal workers strike.

Most concerning, said Legacé, is the agency's history of making something out of nothing:

"They don't know the difference between organizing and conspiring. [...] [CSIS officers] collect info, and once they hear our answers, imagine that we know 'something,' something on we-don't-know-what. They imagine that it's useful info, they create plot, they continue to interview more and more people and they create a climate of fear and suspicion between people."

CSIS was involved in gathering information on protests, along with the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies, in the lead-up to the Toronto G20 meetings and protests. Of the 17 people eventually charged with conspiracy following those investigations, 11 saw their charges dropped, and of the six facing jail-time, none were found guilty of the original conspiracy charges.

Concerns about CSIS' actions are not confined to Canada's borders either. Singh, Chew and Amy Darwish of Tadamon! all warned that the spy agency's actions abroad should make Canadians think twice about cooperating with them.

“It's important to recognize that CSIS is not our friend,” said Signh. “We can look to renditions to torture, through cases like Abdullah Almalki or Maher Arar [or] the treatment of Omar Khadr at Guantanamo, where he was interrogated by CSIS, and they we complicit in his torture there.”

Almalki and Arar both faced rendition, detention and torture in Syria based on suspect information gathered by CSIS and provided to the Syrian government. Khadr was arrested at age 15 by US soldiers in Afghanistan in 2001 and has been detained in the Guantanamo Bay prison ever since. There are allegations he has been tortured while in custody, and human rights groups say that as a minor he should have been treated as a child soldier under the Geneva Convention.

Despite these incidents, information sharing between CSIS and international intelligence agencies known or suspected to use torture continues.

“It maintains intelligence sharing agreements with 147 other agencies, including not only Israel's Mossad, but also the Mukhabarats or secret police of Egypt, Syria and Morocco,” Darwish explained. “This can not only cause complications for people when they travel overseas, but can also put community members and their families at risk.”

The result of CSIS' actions, the coalition alleges, is a chilling effect on anyone who considers joining a social movement, getting involved in community organizing, or speaking out publicly on issues contrary to the federal government's concerns.

“[CSIS' actions] creates a climate of fear and insecurity, so people stop wanting to get involved in community organizing of any kind because they feel it will attract unnecessary attention; it creates a chilling effect,” said Chew who added that the impact doesn't just stop with the peopel who receive visits. "There are many people who would like to be here from my community but who won't come forward. You don't speak out for your rights generally; it creates fear, intimidation.”

CSIS has defended it's actions in the past, saying that their investigations are necessary to ensure the safety of the Canadian public and for our national security and interests. CSIS, though, is not charged with setting those interests, leading some to question to what degree changes in the political wind can impact their investigations.

According to Darwish, the fact that CSIS is mandated to collect information about the influence of foreign interests on domestic activities in Canada provides a pretext for unfairly targeting groups, particularly those who support “national liberation struggles or anti-colonial movements abroad.”

She characterized CSIS' definition of what constitutes Canadian interests and what poses a national security risk as “very narrow” and “influenced by political priorities and interests.”

“In fact, even the Security Intelligence and Review Committee, which is CSIS' own oversight body, has claimed that CSIS has a regrettable attitude that supporting Arab causes can be suspicious,” she said.

Domestic activities also raise questions of the agency's impartiality and whether its actions can be seen as separate from political priorities, said Singh.

“The surveillance of Indigenous communities is one example among many showing that CSIS does not play a neutral role. [...] It's highly politicized and the state determines who the enemies are,” he said. “And historically, the very origins of policing in Canada, the Northwest Mounted Police and eventually the RCMP, was to quell native rebellions and was in the service of Canadian colonialism.”

Echoes of this can be seen today, panelists said, in the government's use of terms like “enemy of the government” in internal documents, publicly characterizing environmental groups as “radicals,” as Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver recently did, or dividing society into sectors such as government “allies” and “adversaries,” as revealed in recent government documents.

Such heavy-handedness and political labeling may come to backfire, though, said Lamy. She said the Conservative government's continued attempts to equate dissent with criminality will lead to the label of “radical” being applied to a growing number of groups from wide range of society. The result, she believes, will be that “the feeling of solidarity will grow larger and larger, because the label [of “radical”] will be stuck to more than anarchists or anti-capitalists or Indigenous movements, but will be applied to a variety of groups that work on questions of social aid, welfare, even women.”

The ultimate goal of this new coalition, and the ongoing campaign against cooperating with CSIS, the speakers said, is to build a greater capacity for self-defense within communities when faced with harassment or interrogation from the spy agency. “[This campaign] is done in the spirit of support and understanding and dialogue,” said Singh. “It's trying to build community-based trust between our different groups and it's there that we can provide proper security versus any kind of threat.”

To that end, the coalition will continue to approach groups across Canada to join the campaign against cooperating with CSIS, as well as share information on what people should do if they or others in their community are approached by the service. Lamy also said that an annual march against what is seen as CSIS' myriad abuses could be in the works for the future.

“[We want to make] sure this gets out across the country and that there are clusters and nodes in every city and town that are getting endorsements and breaking that fear of CSIS,” said Singh.

Tim McSorley is a Dominion editor and member of the Montreal Media Co-op.

Disclosure: The Dominion editorial collective has endorsed the PCN's non-cooperation campaign.

CSIS non-compliance posters

CSIS non-cooperation campaign panel

Occupy Rape Culture

hillarybain — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 08:57:23 +0000

Confronting sexual assault and gender-based violence in the Occupy movement

MONTREAL—On the night of October 19, something happened at Occupy Montreal that would substantially change the mood of the camp.

Exactly what occurred is unclear. Some claim there was an attempted rape. Others shrug off the incident as nothing more than an invasion of a young woman’s personal space by an intoxicated man.

Incidents of sexual assault and rape have been reported in New York, Cleveland, Dallas, Baltimore, Glasgow...sadly, the list goes on. It is an unfortunate reminder that even movements seeking a more just world, free from oppressive systems such as capitalism, are not inherently free from a culture of rape and violence against women and other marginalized populations, such as trans- people and those with disabilities.

“It has nothing to do with Occupy. It has everything to do with the problems in the world that Occupy is trying to eradicate,” says Laura Boyd-Clowes, a philosophy student at Concordia University. Boyd-Clowes has been actively organizing with the Occupy Montreal movement since it began.

“Let's be clear. This is something that happens in society regularly and the Occupy movement is like a little microcosm for society,” she says.

According to the Violence Against Women Survey, published in 1993, 39 per cent of Canadian adult women reported having experienced at least one incident of sexual assault since the age of 16. This comprehensive study on gender-based violence also found that only six per cent of sexual assaults were reported to police.

It should not be seen as exceptional that sexual assault is being reported at Occupy sites. Rather, it seems to reflect a society rife with problems, one that so often silences, excuses or condones sexual assault.

Lucinda Marshall is the President of the Feminist Peace Network. Noticing the prevalence of gender-based oppressions in the Occupy movement, she created a group called Occupy Patriarchy. Based in Washington, DC, Marshall is hopeful that Occupy Patriarchy will spread to other sites and help to create spaces that explicitly address gender-based violence and oppression.

“The bottom line is that you cannot talk about economic justice unless you are going to talk about things like the wage gap, about childcare policies, maternity leave, all of those things that have a huge economic impact on women,” she says. “Those things need to be a part of the conversation if we're going to have real change that [would] impact 99 per cent of us, not just the male percentage of us.”

At Occupy Montreal, movement to address gender-based inequalities has been slow. Discussion of creating safer spaces and an anti-patriarchy committee has circulated in camp. However, after the disputed incident of October 19, no explicit gender-based policies were discussed at the General Assembly, and no statements have been released against sexual assault.

While there has been little concrete action to challenge issues of gender-based violence at Occupy Montreal as of yet, anti-oppression workshops addressing gender inequity have been scheduled and a call-out to organize around issues of consent and safer spaces has been circulated among many local gender advocacy organizations.

When asked if there was a need for a motion explicitly addressing gender-based violence, Occupy Montreal participant Vivian Kaloxilos stated that gender inequality was not an issue. “We try to look at each other not as men and women but as people just doing things,” she said.

Not all agree that a space that operates without acknowledging the existence of gender differences will be able to overcome gender inequality.

“Clearly, gender-based oppression is happening in our world and may be perpetuated even in these well intentioned spaces,” says Vanessa Fernando, External Coordinator of the Sexual Assault Centre of McGill’s Student Society. “I think explicitly acknowledging its occurrence is the first step towards making it better.”

Fernando says that the rhetoric of supposed equality might erase or delegitimize the experiences of those who experience gender-based violence.

For Fernando, identifying the existence of gender inequality and its intersection with issues of privilege, race, and ability is a key move in the creation of a strong movement for social justice. “We can't just be talking about the state and capitalism. We need to be talking about all of these other things together. Historically in these movements it's been like, 'Oh, we'll talk about this later, once we get these baseline things achieved,’ and then it gets further and further marginalized.”

In an effort to combat sexual assault, a handful of occupations have established gender-oriented committees and released statements explicitly condemning gender-based violence. Occupy Wall Street has created a safer-spaces committee that strives to create an anti-oppressive environment. The committee has established itself “in order to respond to threatening actions that continue systematic forms of oppression.”

Safer spaces frameworks have been employed to provide for a greater sense of safety within a community, while recognizing that notions of safety can vary from individual to individual. These spaces frequently challenge the way that dynamics of power, domination, violence, oppression, marginalization and inequality are replicated, and place a greater emphasis on processes of consent.

Fernando sees the creation of safer spaces as part of a process of recognizing differing access to power and privilege. She sees these anti-oppressive frameworks as powerful tools for change and self-reflection. “There needs to be that wholesale recognition that [social change] needs to be created in a way that people will be respected and supported if they critique something," she says. "Otherwise the movement is going to keep perpetuating [the oppressive system] we have.”

Despite the creation of safer spaces committees, controversy continues to surround protocol for dealing with instances of sexual assault. Whether or not to engage with police has caused much argument within occupation sites.

At Occupy Baltimore, a security statement released to the media without the consent of a General Assembly, caused an uproar in the press. The statement suggested that assaults be dealt with internally rather than through police involvement.

Police involvement has been criticized by some for its potential to cause greater harm or trauma to a survivor, particularly those with precarious legal status. The statement was later revised to express that while recognizing the flawed US Justice system, the movement will respect the desires and decisions of survivors when dealing with assault, and will provide alternative resources for those who don’t wish to engage with police.

Instances of assault at Occupy Montreal are dealt with on a case-by-case basis, says Eric Laramee, who acts as Occupy Montreal's negotiator with police. There is a mediation committee set up to deal with the accused, but ultimately the decision on whether or not to call police is up to the survivor.

“I think the key thing is that the ultimate decision is up to the person who was victimized,” feminist advocate Marshall says. “I think that [dealing with assault internally] should be seen as an option. If it's an option that might empower somebody, then, that's terrific. If it's intimidating them from reporting a crime to the police that they feel can better handle it, then that's not okay.”

In the case of the October 19 incident, the police were called and the accused individual was removed from the site. It is unclear whether or not charges were laid.

While the occupations outwardly focus their battle on economic injustice, an important struggle towards gender equity and against a culture of rape continue to be fought within the Occupy camps.

"The problem is still there,” says Marshall. “We have a lot of work to do, specifically to make male people aware of the damage that misogyny and patriarchy cause."

Dana Holtby is a feminist, environmental activist and indy media lover.

Get Consent

Political policing in Montreal

Tim McSorley — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:59:57 +0000

Human rights complaints filed against Montreal police’s GAMMA squad

MONTREAL—The creation of a new police squad meant to monitor anarchist and marginal political groups is raising serious questions about the politicization of the police in Montreal. At least four organizations have objected to the formation of the unit dubbed GAMMA, and two have filed official complaints with human rights and ethics commissions since the public became aware of the unit in May.

“This squad is really a new kind of political police to fight against social movements,” said Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, a spokesperson for the Association for Student Union Solidarity (ASSE). The student coalition, one of the groups filing complaints, saw three of its executive members and one other student member arrested by the GAMMA squad this summer.

The GAMMA unit was formed in January 2011 as an adjunct to the Montreal Police Force's Organized Crime Unit. According to their website, the unit uses tactics developed to monitor mafia and street gangs in order to keep tabs on political activists.

GAMMA's existence came to light last spring in an article published in the Journal de Montreal following the arrest of several activists in their homes in relation to two separate incidents. In response, two groups, the ASSE and the Coalition against Repression and Police Brutality (CRAP), filed complaints with the Quebec Human Rights Commission.

The complainants allege that GAMMA’s mandate contravenes Section 10 of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects the right to peaceful demonstration, without distinction based on race, religion or political conviction. In response to the complaints, the Montreal Police Service (SPVM) issued a statement proclaiming “full and unconditional support” for the Quebec and Canadian charters of rights and freedoms, but maintained police must act to prevent crime and maintain public order.

Last March, members of ASSE participated in an occupation of the offices of Quebec Minister of Finance Raymond Bachand in opposition to tuition fee hikes. It wasn't until July that the GAMMA squad proceeded to arrest four people for their involvement. Three ASSE executives are facing charges of mischief, aggression, and break and enter. “There is nothing criminal in our intentions or actions,” said Nadeau-Dubois, who maintains that the arrests were politically motivated.

In a separate case, the GAMMA squad arrested four demonstrators in late June, this time in relation to a confrontation between police and protesters at an anti-capitalist march on May 1. Accounts differ as to what actually happened at the march. Police claim they were attacked by a group of 15 protesters with wooden and metal sticks, and pelted with projectiles. Demonstrators say police on horseback charged a crowd of parents and children who were there in the hopes of limiting police aggression. Approximately ten minutes after splitting the march in two, police proceeded to snatch Patrice Legendre, a photographer for the communist newspaper Partisan, from the crowd. According to eyewitnesses, a group of protesters pulled him back and a struggle ensued, until police discharged a canister of tear gas and the march continued.

Legendre and three others were arrested at their homes on June 29. It was the first public operation by the GAMMA squad. Nearly 30 officers made the arrests, and the four activists were charged with offenses including assaulting a police officer, assault with a weapon and obstruction of justice. Under their bail conditions they cannot participate in any "non-peaceful" demonstration, carry flags or placards, wear a scarf or carry a backpack at any demonstration.

According to the Partisan, police began monitoring the Maison Norman Bethune bookstore run by the Revolutionary Communist Party following the May 1 march. The interrogations of arrestees were monitored by an investigator from the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET), an inter-jurisdictional anti-terrorism group that allows collaboration between CSIS, Canadian Border Security, RCMP, and municipal police. This police intelligence organization was formed as recently as 2010. Attempts were made to link the accused marchers to the detonation of an explosive device outside a Canadian Forces recruitment centre in Trois Rivières, a town 140 kilometres north-east of Montreal, last year, but witnesses failed to identify the accused from photos.

Although no one from the Coalition Against Police Repression has been specifically targeted by the GAMMA squad, the group has filed complaints with both the Human Rights Commission and the police ethics commission. In an interview, Alexandre Popovic, spokesperson for the group, objected to a statement made by Deputy Chief Robinette to the Montreal Gazette, that, "[Anarchists] are using various protests, like those about [police shooting victim] Fredy Villanueva, tuition fee hikes and even St-Jean Baptiste—as a pretext to vandalize, throw projectiles and assault police officers."

“This is just slander,” said Popovic. CRAP has organized several demonstrations in Montreal North for Fredy Vilanueva, a youth killed by police in 2008. "All were peaceful, calm, and no police were ever attacked. So calling them [anarchists] violent did make me angry, because it’s simply not true.” If the GAMMA unit was created to police vandalism at demonstrations as the SPVM has stated, "then why does the acronym translate to ‘Monitor Activities of Marginal Movements and Anarchists?'" he asks.

“CRAP is not a specifically anarchist group, but we do participate in anarchist organized events like lectures and book fairs," said Popovic. "Why should we have to worry that we are being spied on by police, while an extreme right wing organization doesn’t?”

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) has also weighed in on the activities of the GAMMA squad. In August they sent a letter to the SPVM expressing concern and asking for several clarifications about GAMMA's actions and mandate. “In a democracy, there is no justification for police to target 'anarchists' who commit violence or property damage any more than liberals, conservatives, or socialists,” wrote CCLA counsel general Natalie Desrosiers.

When asked if he were optimistic about whether the Quebec Human Rights Commission or the police ethics commissioner would rule the GAMMA squad to be a violation of the Quebec charter, Popovic was ambivalent. “Police often believe that they can get away with anything, but once in a while the courts will recognize police abuse. Sometimes they get a surprise, ‘Oh shit, I’m guilty.’ So people shouldn’t hesitate to file complaints when they violate our rights.”

Christian MacDonald is a full time cook, a part time writer, and an ideological freelancer. He’s from Cape Breton, and currently lives in Montreal.

Montreal riot cops

Rolling Green

Tim McSorley — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:20:03 +0000

Travels along Quebec Route Verte

GRENOBLE, FRANCE—Quebec is home to the largest cycling network in North America: La Route Verte. Inaugurated in 2007, it connects over 4,000 kilometres of bike routes linking the many regions of Quebec: from Gatineau to Gaspé, and from the south of Montreal to as north as Val-d’Or, Lac-Saint-Jean and Baie-Comeau. This past summer I cycled over 1,100 kilometres from Montreal to Gaspé to see why over four million people rode this trail in 2010.

“When we began the project, the concept was to link up all the regions in Québec with their cycling paths, so that everyone who always wanted to travel by bicycle could have access to it,” says Louis Carpentier, director of development for the Route Verte.

“The other goal was to have something to join the environmental movement—something without motorized activities, something greener.” Now more than ever, Quebecers—especially those living within five kilometres of their workplace or school—are using their bikes as their mode of transportation.

Biking focuses on a healthier lifestyle, choices that have positive impact on the environment and community, and of course cycling is simply a fun activity. Though the concept is shared widely across Europe and North America, cycling is far more about the local region, explains Carpentier.

“Traveling by bicycle is something quite fascinating. It has an impact on what you see, what you eat, what you do," he says. "Traveling 100 kilometres by bike you don’t want a cheeseburger, you want to eat what you saw, you want to taste the fields. Stopping at a local brewery, a winery, to have a good meal, to eat seafood in Gaspésie—this is all part of traveling by bicycle. It also becomes part of the diversification of the regional economy, and it’s quite sustainable too.”

The Route Verte not only diversifies the regional economy, but it influences the creation of new attractions. Richard Goulet from Maskiongé is one such entrepreneur. He reopened the general store dating back to the mid-nineteenth century as a museum and café.

“The general store is part of the community, and we had an opportunity to reopen as it was," Goulet tells me. "We filled the store with things families from the community once bought from it. They sold it back to us.”

Items such as tin containers, radios and toy cars are only a few examples of what sits on the shelves and behind the display cases.

Along the Route Verte there are countless examples of small businesses geared to cyclists. Sylvie LeBeault from Yamachiche renovated her house to include a take-out window to sell ice cream. A sign tells visitors to ring the bell. I did, and LeBeault comes right down.

"Cyclists need both rewards and motivation,” says LeBeault, as she hands me a strawberry ice cream cone.

"If there are more bike paths there will be more cyclists,” says Carpentier. "If there are more cyclists, there will be a greater impact on the regional economy. Some people who own bed and breakfasts are saying that previously they had problems renting a room, but now all summer it is cyclists who are renting the rooms.”

As it stands now, the Route Verte is 94 percent complete, edging close to its initial goal of around 4,300 kilometres of bike paths. Their main focus for the immediate future is reaching that goal, and improving the signage along the route.

An area that needs improvement—one obvious for anyone who has driven on the roads in Quebec— are the pot holes that line the bike paths. Carpentier admits that this is the most common complaint he receives. However, the Route Verte relies on their regional and provincial partners for road maintenance, and thus must be patient while the government decides on construction.

The Route Verte has resulted in a wider impact on life in Québec than solely providing a safer environment for cyclists. Statistics have shown that more and more Quebecers, young and old, are using their bikes for pleasure, transport, exercise or vacation, and the numbers have been growing consistently over the last decade.

The concept of cycling networks is also growing worldwide. Just as the Route Verte looked to European networks, its creators are now being consulted by Australia and Ontario. As the concept expands to encompass more regions, countless local communities are benefiting along the way. The Route Verte stands as an example of how big ideas implemented locally can result in a contagious flow of positive effects for the environment, economy, and lifestyle.

Crossing borders for stories, Michael Sabelli is in constant motion while he captures what's happening in the world in words.

Route Verte