THE POLITICS ISSUE
Published since Nov. 21, 1910 Circulation: 3,500 ISSN 0845-356X Suite 3-04 8900 114 St. NW University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2J7 Advertising www.f-media.ca
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APRIL 2019
Editor-in-Chief News Editor Oumar Salifou Nathan Fung Managing Editor Sofia Osborne
Opinion Editor Andrew McWhinney
Art Director Staff Reporters Jessica Tang Adam Lachacz Kate Turner Photo Editor Richard Bagan Director of Finance & Administration Online Editor Lukas Adomonis Victoria Chiu Webmaster Papa Gyeke-Lartey
GSJS The Gateway is published by the Gateway Student Journalism Society (GSJS), a student-run, autonomous, apolitical not-for-profit organization, operated in accordance with the Societies Act of Alberta. Copyright All materials appearing in The Gateway bear copyright of their creator(s) and may not be used without written consent.
ILLUSTRATION SHELLEY TIAN “GROCERY RUN”
DEAR READER, This is the last issue of the 2018-19 year, and it’s a big one. Thank you for picking up the magazine this year, leafing through it, doodling on its pages. We’ve been so honoured to work on this project, and are really proud of all the time and energy our staff and contributors have poured into these pages. Each year, The Gateway becomes what students make of it. Thank you for giving us this space. For our last hurrah, we’ve put together the politics issue. Here at The Gateway, a significant amount of our work goes into covering politics; our mandate is to hold the university administration and student politicians accountable. But it’s hard to showcase that work in the magazine, since we work far ahead of time on these issues, and most of the time these political stories feel too timely to wait on. But with an important election year upon us, and so many interesting political stories happening around campus, it felt like the right time to put them in print. So here it is! It’s been a great eight months. Thanks again for everything! We’ll see you around, Sofia Osborne Managing Editor
Jessica Tang Art Director
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contents ILLUSTRATION SOFIA GAUVIN
Communicators. Publicists. Promoters. Great cities have great arts communities. They also have champions within them whose passion, drive and creativity bring the arts to the forefront. You can be that champion. Learn from others who share your passion. Study arts management as part of your Bachelor of Arts degree here at the University of Alberta. Complete an 18-credit minor through MacEwan University’s Arts and Cultural Management program.
MacEwan.ca/ArtsManagement 4 | GTWY.CA
notes
features
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12
In the Grey
18
Maskwa House
24
Paint the Province
Political Art Rock the status quo with our writers’ favourite pieces of political art.
required reading
08 30
Tipping the Scales Read a former Students’ Union councillor’s take on why the SU has become so detached from regular students.
Editorial: The Gateway’s autonomy should be preserved Find out what our editors have to say about criticism from student politicians.
Université d’Ottawa Université d’Ottawa
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Try to find some common ground in the debate around oil in Alberta.
Learn about a reconciliation project the university has committed to, but has yet to build.
Get inspired to vote in the provincial election this spring.
diversions
32
Horoscopes
34
Crossword
36
Comics
See what April has in store for you.
Test your political know-how.
Check out the final comics of the year.
University Universityof ofOttawa Ottawa
La d’avenir Lamédecine, médecine, un choix d’avenir
Université d’Ottawa
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University of Ottawa
La médecine, un àchoix d’avenir Étudier l’Université d’Ottawa Étudier d’Ottawa Étudier à l’Université d’Ottawa
Places réservées au programme francophone de médecine • un programme francophone de médecine • un environnement bilingue • un programme innovateur où la technologie fait partie intégrante de la formation
• des places réservées pour les étudiants de l’Atlantique, de l’Ouest et des Territoires • un appui financier pour retourner faire certains stages pratiques chez-vous
À l’Université d’Ottawa, le Consortium national de formation en santé (CNFS) contibue à offrir un accès accru à des programmes d’études dans le domaine de la santé, aux francophones issus des collectivités en situation minoritaire. cnfs.ca
medecine.uOttawa.ca
La présente initiative a été rendue possible grâce à la contribution financière de Santé Canada.
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CONTRIBUTORS ILLUSTRATION MARIE YUAN
ELIF ATILA Horoscopes & Crossword Elif is in her third year of a political science major and English minor. In her free time, she likes to help out with charity organizations, plant stuff, and eat good food. Having a strong community is important for her since it brings a sense of peace and belonging.
HUGH BAGAN “Civil Servants” Hugh is a third-year computing science student. This month’s comic is about all them dang politics.
SAMANTHA BURYN “Paint the Province” Sam is a second-year English major. She is passionate about writing, coffee, and all things The Office.
JERALDINE CHONG “Qualifications” Jeraldine is a fourth-year art and design major with a double minor in film studies and arts and cultural management who is freaking out about finding a job once she graduates. Her comic for this issue expresses exactly that feeling.
ELIZABETH GIERL “In the Grey” Elizabeth is in her fourth year of electrical engineering and has been interested in energy for many years. She spends most of her free time working with the U of A’s Eco Car team, where she co-leads the Fuel Cell subteam and gets to nerd out about electronics, hydrogen, and fuel cells. She has done research on oil in Alberta through an Emerald Award honorarium.
SOFIA GAUVIN Contents illustration Sofia is a first-year science student. She is the typical artsy, alternative-rock listening, vegetarian, librarian, wannabe-hipster type. She loves to spend her time watching comedy skits in the library and undoubtedly making people feel uncomfortable when she fails to control her sporadic laughter.
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DANIELLE MCBETH “Political Art” illustration Danielle is a fifth-year student in the design program, with a focus on visual communication design and sociology. Her piece for this issue uses illustration, typography, and a glitch effect to allude to the disruptive nature of political art.
KYLE MONDA “Tipping the Scales” Kyle is a fifth-year arts student with a major in art and design and a minor in English. He has previously served on Students’ Council, General Faculties Council, and more university committees than he can count.
SHELLEY TIAN “Grocery Run” Shelley is in the final year of her computing science degree. Biking is one of her favourite summer activities because she doesn’t have the patience to walk.
ALEXANDER VINCENT “Death of a Comic” Alexander is a fourth-year fine arts student. He hopes you enjoy the last Goblin comic of 2018-19.
MARIE YUAN Contributors illustration Marie is a fifth-year student in the faculty of education. She is passionate about art, teaching, hand-lettering, and design, and she enjoys hiking and backpacking in the Canadian Rockies when she has time. She feels the most relaxed when she’s reading a children’s book and drinking a cup of coffee.
CHRISTINA ZHU “Vote!” illustration Christina is a fourth-year design student on exchange from Germany. Her pieces combine subtle visual messages with mystic atmospheres. She believes in democracy, and hopes that you do too.
TEXT JONAH DUNCH | ILLUSTRATION DANIELLE MCBETH
NOTES
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A
rt has the power to entertain, but it can also move and provoke. In trying times, artists can use their craft to interrogate systems of power and imagine alternative realities. By questioning norms and bearing witness to human life, art can rock the status quo. With that in mind, we asked our arts & culture writers what political artworks are inspiring them in our current time of unrest.
“I’d say my current favourite group of artists — or media personalities — who do politically charged work would be leftist YouTubers at large, #BreadTube, and specifically Hbomberguy, Philosophy Tube, and Contrapoints, because they’re doing lots of really intelligent and nuanced and complex (and actually authentically creative) artistic work, but with political theory and philosophy and history to undergird it. They’re really making hardcore topics and thorny dis“There’s a singer, Amanda Palmer, and she’s had multiple ciplinary areas accessible to a public audience, to an online bands, like Punk Cabaret-type music. She’s had Amanda audience, and bringing lots of intelligence and straightPalmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra, The Dresden Dolls, and up cool vibes to the discourse at large. I’m a huge fan; in she’s done solo music. And most recently, she’s released a particular I’ve followed Philosophy Tube’s work from the song called ‘Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now,’ which was beginning of his channel, and it’s been wonderful to see about the whole Me Too movement and obviously every- him grow and change as I’ve grown and changed alongthing that Harvey Weinstein did to up-and-coming people side him.” in the industry. — Jonah Dunch The video’s really hard to watch, because it’s such a graphic representation of everything that Weinstein did “The one thing that is completely politically charged that from the perspective of the women he was taking advan- I’ve listened to in the past couple weeks that’s awesome tage of. And I felt it was a really powerful comment on it, is a song by The 1975 called ‘Love It if We Made It,’ and it’s because it came out around the time of the verdict. She has all about living in postmodernism and the breakdown of another song that’s about Donald Trump and how terrible democratic institutions but also the breakdown of some he is called ‘Small Hands, Small Heart.’ kind of perception of global culture. Everything’s so fucked, A lot of the mainstream music coming out right now essentially, is what the whole song’s going off of. So every is just commercialization of sex, basically, but Palmer is single line is just another reference to a headline from the looking at it from a completely opposite perspective and past two years. It’s fun to go through and see, line by line, saying it’s people being sexually taken advantage of, which what he’s talking about. But you can, and there’s always a is what’s leading them to the positions where they’re able news article for every reference.” to be massive celebrities and produce such famous music — Nico Larson or movies.” — Jake Gallant “One piece of political art I know is Picasso’s painting ‘Guernica,’ which was inspired by the bombing of Guernica “What comes to mind is Childish Gambino’s song ‘This Is during the Second World War. And I know it’s cubist art, America’ that came out last summer. And I just remember and so it’s very abstract. You have a lot of death scenes in when it came out, everyone was talking about it and hav- one picture. Very sad. That’s all I have to say. Google it.” g ing different takes on it. And I liked hearing and seeing all — Maria Besko these ideas that were arising from watching this one music video and trying to understand what it was about. That’s what I like: that it’s kind of ambiguous, that you can find different meanings. But there’s a lot of social commentary and critique in that one song.” — Etienne Fillion-Sauve
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REQUIRED READING
HOW THE GAP BETWEEN SU EXECUTIVES AND COUNCILLORS IS KILLING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT.
TEXT KYLE MONDA
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STUDENTS’ COUNCIL HAS HAD A CHAOTIC YEAR SO FAR,
Power in the SU is increasingly concentrated in the executive branch and in unelected staff, eroding the facing many Discipline, Interpretation, and Enforceconnection between the student body and the union. ment (DIE) Board hearings that forced councillors to Similar to a government, the SU has three branches: focus their attention on internal problems. Between the executive, the legislative (Students’ Council), and shoddy record keeping, a battle over the failed student the judicial (the DIE Board). Students’ Council, the spaces levy, and trying to mend council’s relationship “ultimate authority” of the SU, drafts bylaws and powith Indigenous students on campus, there’s been litical policies, represents students via a proportional little time to address other projects. The inspiring system of faculty representation, and is meant to hold protest movement that came together after last year’s executives accountable. The executive is tasked with international tuition and residence rates hike fizzled day-to-day operations of the union along with external out, and the Students’ Union (SU) never wanted to be and internal advocacy. The DIE Board is responsible for at the forefront of it anyway. How has the SU become interpreting SU legislation and recommending approso detached from students-at-large? priate remedial actions in cases of violations. As a former SU Councillor (2016-17) and General Students’ Council is still at the top of the food Faculties Council (GFC) member (2017-18), I care deeply chain in writing, but in practice, executives largely about the viability of the SU and have seen the differcontrol all aspects of the SU and council rarely blocks ence it can make in the lives of students when it’s executive initiatives. SU bylaws and operating policies working effectively. I ran for vice-president (student give executives a wide range of autonomy from council, life) in 2017, and, while I lost, I’ve stayed tuned into the minimizing potential avenues for oversight. The execoperations of the SU. Frustratingly, the institution is utive committee is the only committee of council that frequently abused to advance the personal interests of can approve motions without needing the secondary student representatives.
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REQUIRED READING
approval of council, meaning they can make decisions a lot faster than is possible for any other committee. The executive committee also has the unique power to spend up to $5,000 without council approval, allowing executives to approve funding for their own initiatives. As essentially full-time employees, executives have a lot of power over councillors by just having more time and access to SU staff to work on their goals. Unlike executives, who get $39,500 per year, councillors aren’t paid — and it’s a thankless job. During my year as a councillor, I dedicated immeasurable hours to the basic duty of pre-meeting
readings, along with working on committees and extra outreach initiatives. The only compensation I received was an SU notebook and pen, a subsidy for an SU jacket, and a 10 per cent discount on food and drinks at SU businesses. Students’ Council is starved of funding and resources, and as such, councillors don’t have much of a budget to draw on for projects: in the 2017-18 academic year, only $27,017 was spent on council. That works out to around $844 per councillor, which is mostly spent on the Speaker’s salary, the two-day training retreat, and catering for every meeting. There’s little, if any, funding available
COMBINED WITH THE PRESSURE OF BEING A FULL-TIME
STUDENT, COUNCILLORS ARE
OVERWHELMED
AND HAVE LITTLE SUPPORT.
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REQUIRED READING
for councillors to organize outreach or consultation events, making it difficult to fulfill their duties. Disengaged students don’t turn out to events without food or other incentives to draw them in, and executives can’t fill that gap because they don’t have the time to consult students on the ground across every faculty. When I signed up to be a councillor, I knew it was a volunteer position, but it was still constantly disheartening to feel so undervalued. My time on GFC was even worse: treated as an afterthought by the SU, I worked on advocacy goals largely alone, and once even needed to respond to questions from university administrators who wanted to know why two SU executive members hadn’t bothered to show up to a meeting. Combined with the pressure of being a full-time student, councillors are overwhelmed and have little support. They carry responsibility for big decisions and face (valid) scrutiny from the public and media, so it’s natural to want to rock the boat as little as possible. I’m proud of the work I did as a representative, but it took an undeniable emotional toll with little available supports. Further complicating the relationship between executives and students’ councillors are the ever-increasing stakes of elections. Election bylaws attempt to create an equal playing field with a pre-campaign blackout period and strict financing rules, but this doesn’t stop aspiring executives from planning out their campaigns months or years in advance. It’s now common for future executives to announce their candidacy in January, weeks before the official campaign period even begins. In 2017-18, all of the executives who won were in their fifth year on campus or more. While the financial costs of a campaign are covered by the SU, the indirect costs are not. Students with the means to extend their degrees and take a part-time course load for the campaign are advantaged, and so are those who don’t need to have a part-time job to afford their studies. Students who don’t follow SU politics will largely vote for whichever candidate’s campaign talks to them directly, meaning any candidate that can’t miss mandatory attendance courses loses out on priceless face-to-face time with students. It’s common for executives to enroll in a single
course via Open Studies and withdraw so they don’t need to do any course work while still maintaining student status, at a cost of $1,261.09. With this new class of privileged career executives, it’s near impossible for regular students to compete. It’s no wonder that tension is growing between councillors and executives when executives are increasingly removed from the experiences of average students, and councillors are left with no resources to make that connection. Solutions to these problems wouldn’t be easy: election bylaw could be reformed to mandate a longer pre-campaign blackout period, a minimum course load for candidates, or a limit on the years spent on campus. All of these could have unintended consequences on candidates, but might help limit the advantage older and wealthier candidates have in the current system. However, current executives are unlikely to support reforms to election bylaws that helped get them elected, and any council proposal without executive support faces an uphill battle. A more elegant solution would be to pay councillors and provide proper administrative and outreach support: this would attract higher quality candidates to hold executives accountable, and allow councillors to dedicate more time to their duties. The salary wouldn’t need to be significant, but it would have the greatest impact to bring the SU closer to its constituents, which is badly needed in a time when student unions are under attack within Alberta and across Canada. It would also force prospective councillors to treat the position as a real job, rather than a resumébooster they can coast through. Members of the University of Calgary’s Student Legislative Council, their equivalent of our council, are paid $300 a month. Council is the best place for engagement between the SU and students-at-large to happen, but executives disconnected from the needs of average students have their thumb on the scales of power. GovWeek and STRIDE, two SU outreach initiatives designed to encourage more diverse candidates, have yet to make much of an impact, and more radical action is long overdue. It’s time to rebalance the SU before it’s too late. g
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M
orrigan Simpson-Marran, a fifth-year economics student, grew up in Calgary, a city built on the oil and gas industry. “I didn’t actually really have an opinion on oil and gas [before university],” she says. “I knew roughly that if you burn fossil fuels you get emissions, and I knew we somehow put oil into our cars, but I had very little understanding of all that.” In 2016, Simpson-Marran spent the summer interning at Whitehead Oil Company, and that’s when her knowledge and feelings about oil grew. Through all her research for the company, she says she realized
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TEXT ELIZABETH GIERL & SOFIA OSBORNE ILLUSTRATION JESSICA TANG
how much more we could all be doing — on a personal, provincial, and federal level — to reduce our carbon footprints. Since then, she has become involved with the University of Alberta’s Centre for Applied Business Research in Energy and the Environment and spent time interning at an energy think tank. She’s also doing a certificate in environmental and resource management. Simpson-Marran can see the argument around oil from both sides. On the one hand, there are people who are concerned about the rapid rate of climate change; about findings in the newest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that say if we minimize warming to the two degree mark, we’ll “only” lose the Persian Gulf, cause the extinction the world’s tropical reefs, and see over four meters of sea level rise. If we reach three degrees of warming, we can expect the flooding of most coastal cities and forests in the arctic. Four degrees is predicted to bring desert across large sections of India, Bangladesh, and China, make the American Southwest inhabitable, and cause permanent drought in large areas of Europe. The odds of reaching the Paris Agreement goals and keeping warming below 2C are now one in 20. It’s completely understandable that people want to avoid this level of global catastrophe. Many Albertans are scared about our contribution to the global rising temperatures, seeing it as not only something we should address and try to mitigate, but as our duty to do so. But Albertan identity seems inextricably linked to oil. So many jobs and so much prosperity has come from this industry. Even Edmonton’s hockey team is named after it. “If you think about it, your job is intrinsically a part of who you are, it’s what you’ve dedicated your life to doing, so it makes sense that there’s a given loyalty to this product,” Simpson-Marran says. This is something I’ve felt and seen with my own family. My grandpa was a fisherman in Nova Scotia looking for a job to support his family, and he found it in the oil industry in Alberta. He was one of the smartest people I knew; however, after starting work on the ships at the age of 16, he had minimal opportunities for higher education. Later, when I was telling my family about my engineering classes, my grandpa said he never thought anyone in his family would be able to study engineering. It was his hard
work, his labour, that gave my mom and her sisters the opportunity to go to university, and paved the way for me to have the opportunities I’ve had.
In a 2018 survey, only 54 per cent of Albertans said they believe climate change is caused by humans and industrial activity, compared to 70 per cent across Canada as a whole. The rest of Albertans see it as a result of natural patterns in the Earth’s environment, according to an Ecofiscal Canadian survey. It is this very divide that makes both environmental and economic catastrophe at much higher risk of becoming a reality. Activists that deny climate change and try to stop climate action have been, and likely will continue to be, effective at slowing down very necessary steps forward. Many of those who dismiss and devalue the serious and scientifically-backed reality of climate change are those who worry most about the economic devastation that could emerge from the collapse of the industry. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve heard many environmentalists deny our economic reliance on fossil fuels and the large impact losing that industry would have on our quality of life. This denial could lead to the economic and social burden being put disproportionately onto workers and towns that are dependent on this industry. How do we in Alberta address both of these catastrophes, maintain a dialogue, and make sure we distribute the burdens we are facing in a fair way? In such a strongly divided issue, the solution often lies in the grey — not through inaction and the dismissal of both issues, but rather genuine accounting for the concerns of each party.
Oil is a key part of the settler history of our province. Hereward Longley, a U of A PhD candidate specializing in the history of oil in Alberta, says the province formed, grew, and developed alongside the oil industry. Just nine years after Alberta became a province in 1905, natural gas was discovered in Turner Valley, outside Calgary. Overnight, 500 oil companies were formed and drilling began, bringing people to the province in droves
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and providing an economic alternative to the hardships of homesteading in Alberta. The industry in Turner Valley fluctuated throughout the first half of the 1900s, but during that time, Imperial Oil was searching for alternatives. On February 13, 1947, everything changed: oil was struck in Leduc. This led to further discoveries, and soon investments were flooding in, along with immigrants looking for work. Calgary and Edmonton emerged as major cities and Alberta went from an agricultural province to one full of new opportunities. And then there are the oil sands. Humans had known about this resource forever — the Cree used the tar to waterproof their canoes, and explorers wrote about the heavy oil they would see floating on the rivers. But the oil sands weren’t exploited until the 1960s, when the technology to extract the oil had finally been developed. This caused the industry to massively expand, bringing people to the province and causing population booms in Calgary
and Edmonton, as well as the development of many small towns and cities around oil sands mining operations. “It’s become this incredible cornerstone of the economy that’s completely transformed the number of people who live here and the way the political makeup of the province is formed,” Longley says. Many Albertans became dependent on the oil industry for employment. But it also resulted in huge environmental change in Northern Alberta. Many Indigenous and Métis communities were left out of the prosperity, and suffered the most environmental consequences. “[Oil is] this complicated thing with all these impacts on the environment and Indigenous communities — that all stems back to the beginning of the industry,” Longley says. Alberta wouldn’t be the province it is today without the jobs and opportunities that have come from oil. A job in oil and gas is by no means the only way a person can support themselves and their family, but many Albertans relate to this narrative. This is often painted as the economic argument for oil, but what is the economic reality of oil in Alberta? Simpson-Marran says it’s much more tenuous than we think. In Alberta, you often hear people say
“I think once people understand that this [transition] is necessary and that we’re all in this together and that it’s going to be fair, then they’re more likely to accept it and more likely to support it.”
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we have the best oil in the world, but that’s just not true from a chemical perspective. The oil sands produce the most expensive oil with the highest emissions in the world. The bitumen can’t just be pumped from the ground like conventional oil — it has to be “mined,” requiring additional upgrading and refining, making the process more expensive. When we do get the oil out of the ground, it then has to be pulled from sludgy sand. On top of that, the oil we extract isn’t high quality. It has high sulfur content, and for many applications that sulfur needs to be removed and properly disposed of — an expensive process that raises the price of producing our oil even more. Being at the bottom of the barrel has its consequences. It’s hard for us to be competitive in the international market unless the price of oil is high and regulations are minimal. With anxiety around climate change and air pollution rising, there’s a global push to diversify energy resources away from traditional fossil fuels. There are other global problems making the future of Albertan oil uncertain. The US is our biggest export partner — in 2015, 97 per cent of our oil went to them — but
they became a net exporter of oil in 2018. “If you’re cutting off your biggest market at the knees cause they’re able to supply their own needs, you’ve got a problem,” SimpsonMarran says. And when we talk about issues like the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, the argument is often made that we need to get Albertan oil to other markets besides the U.S. “[But] the thing that I find interesting about that is no one took the time to see if other markets want our oil,” Simpson-Marran says. “To put it in economic terms, our oil is not a perfect substitute for every other oil in the world. It sells at a discount, it’s a crappy oil.” For example, she can’t find any public data to show that China has any capability to handle our oil. Another cause for concern is the International Marine Organization’s new sulfur regulation that will take effect in 2020, requiring oil producers to reduce their sulfur content from 3.5 per cent to 0.5 per cent. This means more of Canada’s exported oil will have to be processed to a higher degree, making it more expensive to produce and meaning over a third of the production of the Athabasca oil sands, the largest oil sands development in Alberta, unprofitable. “In terms of the pragmatic view, when you present the fact that our oil is expensive to produce and can’t get as high of a price, when you put it in dollar terms, I think
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that’s when a lot of people start to realize that this is a more nuanced issue than what we’re presented with by mainstream media and politicians,” Simpson-Marran says.
income to Alberta to help Alberta make this transition, which is a transition in the interest of the whole country.” Adkin has been following climate policy since the 1990s, and has often heard the argument that, as an energy-producing country that wants to be competitive, Canada shouldn’t have ambitious targets. Because of this It seems as though there are two emerging truths: first, logic, she says, Canada hasn’t been doing its fair share. that we won’t be able to produce oil like we have in the “Everyone thinks somebody else is going to do the hard past for much longer; and second, that a transition away part so nobody does anything and we end up with the from oil is a reality that we will have to face. While about situation we’re in now where the world is not meeting the half of Albertans deny the role humans play in climate targets that are necessary,” she says. change, that kind of disregard for science shouldn’t be When it comes to climate change, energy, and adaptavalidated. How do we have a discussion based on these tion, it’s important for the government to take a leadership realities, and help those who will be most affected by this role and engage with citizens in a meaningful way, Adkin likely transition, while still making the shifts that need to adds. Instead of having experts tell the public what to do, be made to address climate change? a bottom-up discussion needs to be had that includes all The idea of fairness seems to be at the root of our people in Alberta. province’s polarization. Laurie Adkin, a political science But politically, this sort of discussion isn’t happening. professor who studies climate change policy, says much of Jason Kenney, the leader of Alberta’s United Conservative the worry around moving away from oil is about how the Party, is running his campaign on a central goal of dismancosts of that divestment will be distributed fairly. tling the carbon tax, one of the most effective tools that For a long time, Canada has profited from Alberta’s Alberta has implemented to combat both environmental energy wealth and resources. But it can’t reach emis- and economic catastrophe. He’s promising to bring jobs sion reduction targets without cuts from Alberta, which back to the fossil fuel industry, when in truth, the governaccounts for 30 per cent of Canada’s emissions despite ment has little control over the global reality of this issue. having a population of only 4.3 million. This is 10 per cent Conversely, the province’s NDP has an extensive set higher than emissions from Ontario, which has over triple of climate and economic diversification goals called the the population. Because of this disparity, there needs to Climate Leadership Plan. But recently, they’ve fallen back be federal support in having these conversations and set- on some of their commitments, delaying their cap on oil ting goals to reach these targets. sands emissions and rolling back taxes on heavy emitters. Adkin says we need to map out how to get to net zero Presumably, they felt they had to make these changes carbon by 2050, and do so without putting extraordinary because of the backlash they received from Albertans and costs on any one part of the population. industry stakeholders. This may have been avoided if there “My argument up until now has been that Alberta had been more public consultation before implementing can’t just be expected to make this transition without these policies. a sharing of the cost throughout the country,” she says. “There needs to be some form of transfer of resources and
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“I think once people understand that this [transition] is necessary and that we’re all in this together and that it’s going to be fair, then they’re more likely to accept it and more likely to support it,” Adkin says.
What would it look like to make that transition? Tim Weiss, who splits his time as a researcher and professor between the faculties of business and engineering, says Alberta can diversify its energy systems and still be a leader in the industry, given our wealth of technical expertise and renewable resources, as well as our already energy-literate population. “If you put all those things together, I think we’re pretty well-positioned to be thinking about diversifying for the future,” he says. “I don’t think it’s going to happen by accident, and if we don’t make that deliberate choice I don’t think it’s a given that it does happen. But I do think we’re well-positioned to see that future coming and to be ready for it.”
“If we’re going to be using this resource, how are we making sure that it’s actually fuelling
Weiss stresses that even with the most aggressive decarbonisation strategies, we wouldn’t be phasing out fossil fuels overnight; there’s a window of opportunity to benefit from oil and gas as we transition away from it. But if we’re still going to be developing the oil sands, he says, it needs to be done in the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly way possible, and profits from the oils sands need to be invested into diversifying the province’s energy system. If we are going to mine fossil fuels somewhere in the world, Weiss says he’d like to see that happen in a jurisdiction that is taking that money and investing it into renewables or other technologies. “If we’re going to be using this resource,” he says. “How are we making sure that it’s actually fuelling the future?”
Alberta’s identity is defined by oil. This mentality and history often leaves Albertans, myself included, feeling a strange sort of guilt when critiquing the industry. How do we turn our back on the things that brought us to this point? How do we appreciate what we have while still acknowledging the realities of climate change? How do we handle the fear that this industry may not be able to do for us what it did for our parents and grandparents? The only way to combat both economic and environmental catastrophe is to open up an honest, fact-driven, and forward-thinking conversation about the industry within our province. When starting to have this conversation, it’s important to understand where Alberta fits within the global energy market. Where we stand in the market is shaped by the kind of oil that we produce. “[Oil] is part of who we are and that’s irrefutable,” Simpson-Marran says. “It’s been making money for a long time and I think we’ve really developed this ‘We’re the hardworking Albertans’ mentality, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing… [But I] think blindly supporting anything without knowing the facts is risk-inducing.” g
the future?”
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Maskwa House A reconciliation project on indefinite hold.
TEXT NATHAN FUNG ILLUSTRATION JESSICA TANG
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An empty field still rests where the Maskwa House of Learning should be, a proposed student life building for Indigenous students at the University of Alberta that was initially announced over three years ago. The $30-million, two-floor facility is supposed to sit just north of the Education Building and serve as a new hub for Indigenous students. The announcement of Maskwa House was made in November 2015 at U of A president David Turpin’s installment ceremony. However, the project has been in the works for over a decade and initially started in the late 90s under a different name, “Gathering Place.” Not much is known about the project before 2009, when there were several rounds of consultation on the project involving members from the university and local First Nation groups. Maskwa House is meant to be a specialized space for Indigenous students on campus, used for programming and ceremonies. However, a quick Google search yields no results beyond 2016 as no developments have occurred on the project since building plans were approved at the committee level in September of that year. Students like Nathan Sunday, a third-year native studies student who represents the faculty on Students’ Council, want answers from the university. Specifically, Sunday wonders what stage the project is in now and if it’s still on the university’s list of priorities. “The university isn’t necessarily as transparent as I think a lot of us would like it to be,” he said. “Even just looking up the business plans for Maskwa House, or any information on it, you can’t find any. So how are students to know? That transparency isn’t there.” So what are the university’s plans for the project? And why hasn’t Maskwa House been built yet? Is it a lack of will on the university’s behalf? Or is it a lack of government funding that’s holding the project back?
Chris Andersen, dean of the faculty of native studies, said Maskwa House would be a “one-stop shop” for Indigenous students. Being aware of the project since 1999, Andersen added that the building would allow First Peoples’ House, which runs programming and services for Indigenous students, to do other things they weren’t able to do before. “One of the things it would add is kind of this spectacular, symbolic space to do the kinds of things that they’re already doing, and plus a bunch of other things they don’t have the capacity to do now,” he said.
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If Maskwa House is built, the plan is for a number of Indigenous student services that are spread across campus to be moved into that facility. This would include First Peoples’ House — which has offices on the second floor of the Students’ Union Building — as well as Aboriginal Student Council, which is currently located in the North Power Plant close to Dewey’s. One of the services focused on during the planning of Maskwa House was the Transition Year Program (TYP), which is currently run by First Peoples’ House. TYP helps first-year Indigenous students adapt to the changes that come with studying at a post-secondary institution. It provides not only academic support, but cultural supports as well through the provision of Elders and cultural teachers. Ben Louie, the university’s architect, has worked on designing and planning Maskwa House since he joined the university in 2009. He said Maskwa House would provide a new base of operations for TYP.
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“Even just looking up the business plans for Maskwa House, or any information on it, you can't find any. So how are students to know? That transparency isn't there." APRIL 2019 | 23
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“[Maskwa House] has an area on level one that really supports the transitional program,” he said. “Because the TYP program has been very successful, it actually needs a lot more space to make it functional.” Some of the building’s other features include a kitchen space, change rooms and outdoor space for ceremonies, an Elder’s room, and multi-function rooms. Louie also said the location of Maskwa House, just north of the Education Building underneath its trademark mural, would put the new facility in a place that gets a lot of traffic. He said that by choosing that location, Maskwa House would be a highly visible addition to campus. “Location is everything,” he said. “Not only is it centrally located, it’s part of the circulation path, so it will make the building really accessible.”
The U of A wouldn’t be the first Canadian campus to have a specific facility for Aboriginal students to call home. The University of Saskatchewan has the Gordon Oakes Red Bear Student Centre, which opened in late 2015, and the University of Manitoba has the Migizii Agamik, or the Bald Eagle Lodge, which opened in 2008. Both of these buildings house various services for Métis, First Nations, and Inuit students. Another example of a university facility for supporting Indigenous students is the First Peoples House at the University of Victoria, which was planned and built while Turpin was president of UVic from 2000 to 2013. According to the university’s website, First Peoples House opened in January 2010 and was built to serve as a “home away from home” for Indigenous students.
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According to Andersen, many of these buildings were built not only in response to a growing movement for reconciliation, but to rising Indigenous enrollment in postsecondary institutions across the country. This includes the U of A, which saw the number of Indigenous undergraduates rise from 799 in 2009 to 1,081 in 2018. UVic also saw a 700 per cent rise in Indigenous student enrollment between 1999 and 2010. According to the UVic website, planning for First Peoples House began as early as 2001 when Turpin “consulted with Coast and Straits Salish Chiefs and Saanich Elders about how to ‘create a welcoming and inviting environment’ for Indigenous students at UVic.” That project ended up costing $7 million, with the BC government paying $2.6 million. The Gateway reached out to Turpin for an interview, however the university declined to add further comment, citing the ongoing nature of the Maskwa House project. But Andersen said Turpin’s hand in the creation of First Peoples House at UVic, as well as the mention of Maskwa House at his installment as president of the U of A, shows that the university is committed to the project. “Turpin believes very strongly in the importance of making the university a safer and welcoming place for Indigenous students,” Andersen said. “This is something Turpin has a long relationship with and reputation for, which is valuing and prioritizing Indigenous students.”
So why hasn’t Maskwa House been built yet? “I’ve been told that the reason why it’s taking so long is that the university says there are no donors for the project,” Sunday said. “I don’t know if that’s true or not or how much work the university has done trying to get donations.”
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“If it’s not important, why would it be objective four, strategy two of the Institutional Strategic Plan? Of course it’s important.” Louie, the university architect, echoed Andersen’s This sentiment is echoed by Katherine Belcourt, a thirdyear science student and president of Aboriginal Student conviction that Maskwa House will get built, saying it’s a Council, who feels that funding priorities tend to go to oth- question of “when” and not “if.” “If it’s not important, why would it be objective four, er faculties like engineering. “I think it hasn’t been made a priority. I think that it strategy two of the Institutional Strategic Plan?” he said. should be a priority and it’s just something that’s easy to “Of course it’s important.” Louie added that since he has worked on the project, fall between the cracks,” she said. “There are a lot of things the university has taken steps to make it more practical. on campus that are prioritized over other things.” While some might question the university’s commit- Originally estimated to cost $40 million in 2009, revisions to the project, such as connecting it to Education North ment to the project, Andersen said that isn’t the case. instead of having it as a stand-alone building, helped bring “I will say for a general level, this is not something that’s the project costs down to $30 million in 2015. fallen off anybody’s plate,” he said. “This is something that’s As for the funding, Andersen said discussions between still an institutional priority.” the university and both provincial and federal governThe hurdle Maskwa House is facing isn’t coming from ments are ongoing, and that Turpin has brought the project a shortage in willpower, Andersen added, but from the lack of government funding to support the project. He ex- up during several visits to Ottawa. However, for various plained that most capital projects at the U of A are built reasons, the funding just hasn’t been made available. “If you were to talk to people who were involved in the with a combination of money from donors and funding building of these [spaces] in other universities, it’s never a from both the provincial and federal governments. He said short process,” he said. “You kind of hope for a window of the university has done feasibility studies with donors gauging their support for the project, which he said is high. opportunity. Sometimes it looks like it might rise up and Now, the only outstanding factor is funding from both lev- then doesn’t, but basically, it’s just sticking to it and hoping you get lucky and that the stars align at some point.” els of government. While Andersen assures it’s still a priority, Sunday is While funding has not been secured for the project, doubtful if the project will get off the ground within the Andersen said getting Maskwa House built is still on the university’s agenda. The university’s 2016-2021 institution- next five years. “In my mind I’m skeptical,” Sunday said. “I would like al strategic plan, which outlines the goals of the U of A, states the development of a “thoughtful, respectful, mean- it to be finished soon. However, just because we know it’s been on the university’s radar for so long, even before ingful, and sustainable response to the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada” as its fourth Turpin, I’m not sure that it will get done anytime soon.” g objective. The second of three strategies to fulfill that objective is the creation of Maskwa House.
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PAINT THE PROVINCE:
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TEXT SAMANTHA BURYN PHOTO RICHARD BAGAN
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s we approach Alberta’s provincial election on April 16, students are working hard on campus to get young voters to the polls. This spring, Albertans will cast their ballots for candidates in their constituency to be elected Members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta (MLA). The leader of the political party with the most elected MLAs will become the Premier of Alberta. This election comes four years after the New Democratic Party (NDP) won in 2015, only the fourth change in government in Alberta’s history. Lois Harder, a professor of political science and the Principal of the Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta, said youth voters will play a critical role in the upcoming election. “Millennials, as I understand it, will now constitute the largest demographic in the Canadian population,” she said. “They have a lot of clout and they should be exercising it at the voting booth.” The stakes of this election are high, but if history repeats itself, many young Albertans will not vote come election day. According to Elections Alberta, voters aged 18-24 only made up seven per cent of voter participation in the 2015 provincial election, while their age group represented 12 per cent of the Albertan population that year. Conversely, the 65+ age range, which represented 15 per cent of the population, made up 21 per cent of voters. With a breakdown like this, youth voices and issues are underrepresented.
THE STUDENT VOTE To help students prepare for the upcoming election, the Students’ Union has facilitated a “Get Out The Vote” campaign on campus. As a non-partisan initiative, this campaign is focused on getting students, especially firsttime voters, to the polls. They are currently prioritizing the provincial election, but will shift focus to the upcoming federal election in the summer. Stephen Raitz, a fifth-year arts student in urban planning and the Get Out The Vote campaign coordinator, said he understands voting isn’t always accessible to students. “Students can face additional barriers to voting in regards to where their residence is, their address, their forms of ID, and how new they are to Edmonton and the province,” he said. “We’re here to provide the information, to answer questions, and to provide a way for people to get involved with the campaign.”
The online “Pledge to Vote” form is the main tool being used by the campaign. When a student completes the form, they’re promising to vote in the upcoming provincial and federal elections and giving the campaign permission to reach out to them with information about voting. The Get Out The Vote campaign is also on campus every day, with many of its 60 volunteers tabling, offering oneon-one help, and relaying voting information in-person. Raitz said voting in elections can have significant impacts on young people, who will have a longer future in Alberta than older generations. “When parties see that student voter turnout is higher, they see that students are activated, they’re aware politically, and they will make noise on issues if the government is creating any situation that students would not enjoy,” Raitz said. With first-time voters as their target demographic, the Get Out The Vote campaign is trying to get eligible citizens voting as early as possible. A field-study conducted in 1998 and published in the American Journal of Political Science suggests that when a citizen votes in their first election, they are more likely to vote in the future. As a result, the earlier voters begin participating in elections, the more engaged society is as a whole. Harder said the youth vote will have significant impacts on Albertan society. “Students are at the cutting edge of all of the things that matter,” she said. “What is our future all about? What is climate change policy going to be? What is the future of our economy going to look like? What’s it going to mean to have a family or not have a family?” “These are all issues that matter very intensely to all of us and my own faith is really in young people because I think that’s where the hope lies,” Harder said.
VOLUNTARY STUDENT UNIONISM One of the topics that hangs in the balance for the upcoming election is Students’ Union fees. The PostSecondary Learning Act states that all post-secondary institutions in Alberta can charge students mandatory fees. The U of A Students’ Union currently charges full-time students a mandatory $50.68 membership fee per term, which goes towards running the Students’ Union Building, facilitating programming like Week of Welcome, and supporting student services like the Peer Support Centre. Full-time students are also charged $46.00 in dedicated
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fees per term towards organizations like the Campus Food Bank, The Landing, and Student Legal Services. In May 2018, the United Conservative Party (UCP), led by Jason Kenney, passed a policy directive stating these fees should be voluntary for students. The United Conservatives at the University of Alberta (UCUA) said in a statement that “the policy aims to improve affordability for students. If students have the opportunity to decide which services they would like to use, the average student will save money…The UCUA believes that student choice and access to services are important. Therefore, we believe in an opt-out fee model.” But Jeffrey Swanson, a second-year political science student and the vice-president external of the UAlberta Campus New Democrats, said he worries about the consequences of this policy. “What making Students’ Union fees opt-outable would do effectively is make it cheap up front, but it would cause costs to pile up in other places,” he said. He explained that if students have the opportunity to optout of the SU, there will be less funding for the students who want to benefit from these services. At an event at Dewey’s on March 6, Kenney told The Gateway that the UCP has “not made a decision yet” on voluntary student unionism (VSU). “I am interested to hear what people say about [VSU],” he said. “I do not have a closed mind about it.”
CLIMATE CHANGE In 2017, the NDP established a carbon tax on all fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gas emissions, including gasoline, diesel, natural gases, coal, and propane. The tax rate is based on the amount of carbon pollution the fuel releases, and its revenue supports efforts to transition Alberta to a more sustainable economy. Rebates are also offered to compensate for the increased tax rate, offering approximately 60 per cent of Albertan households a full or partial rebate based on net income and the number of people in the household. The Alberta government predicts that a single person in 2019 who uses 2,000 litres of gasoline will be taxed $134. Premier Rachel Notley, who is campaigning for her second-term, has stated that the NDP plans to grow the Albertan economy by staying firm on the carbon tax. Further, if work on the Trans Mountain pipeline begins, she says she will move toward signing a federal climate change plan introduced by the Liberal Party of Canada. As a fiscally conservative party, the UCP has approved a policy that states they will repeal the provincial carbon tax and oppose a federal carbon tax if elected. However, he has said he is in favour of a tax on major emitters such as power plants and oil sands operations. Kenney also stated that the UCP will take a more “assertive” approach to ensuring that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is built.
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Also campaigning in the election is the Alberta Party, who said in a position statement that they would exempt homes, businesses, farms, and non-profits from the carbon tax. The Green Party and the Alberta Liberal Party have stated they would maintain the tax, though they would make a few adjustments, and the Freedom Conservative Party of Alberta and the Alberta Advantage Party have said they would repeal it completely. Whether the carbon tax will remain or not will have significant impacts on Alberta’s environmental sustainability, it will also be relevant to the province’s economy, which, after enduring major challenges over recent years, is facing a pivotal moment in the upcoming election. Jeremy Ib Hoefsloot, a fourth-year political science and philosophy combined honours student, the University of Alberta Liberals vice-president operations, and the Liberal Party of Canada’s Edmonton-Strathcona deputy field officer, said he believes the youth vote will play a critical role in the future of climate change. “With us being young people, if we don’t do anything to fight climate change, we’re going to be the ones to face the unbridled effects of it,” he said.
THE ECONOMY After recent years of economic hardship, provincial voters will have to decide which political party will best support Alberta’s economic growth if elected. The UCP states in their 2018 policy declaration that they will prioritize balancing the budget and lowering levels of taxation to support economic growth. Also outlined are plans to restore the provincial corporate and personal tax rate to a flat rate. During their time in office, the NDP has instituted a progressive tax system in which most Albertans pay 10 per cent of their income while those who earned more than $128,145.01 per year in 2018 paid 12 per cent on their earnings and up to 15 per cent on an income above $307,547. The Liberal Party of Alberta has indicated that they support a progressive tax system, while the Alberta Advantage Party supports a flat tax rate. Matthew Melbourn, a second-year honours history student and the UCUA events coordinator, said he thinks the economy plays an important role for students. “There’s lots on the line and... I think a lot of it has to do with the kind of economy we’re going to have in the future and our ability to get a job when we graduate,” he said. “We’re working to pay off our student debts; are we going to have to work to pay off the provincial debt as well?” However, Swanson highlighted what he sees as the important economic work the NDP is doing for students, like freezing tuition and increasing minimum wage to $15 per hour. Economically, the Alberta Party claims to offer a middle-ground choice between the NDP and UCP, combining fiscal conservatism with socially progressive views.
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SOCIAL ISSUES Though economics are taking centre stage in the election debate, there are also many social issues on the line for Albertans. In terms of education, the NDP approved an overhaul of the K-12 school curriculum that began in 2016 and is expected to take six years to complete. But the UCP says in their 2018 policy declaration that they will stop the implementation of the new curriculum and review it “in order to increase emphasis on basic essentials such as literacy and numeracy, increase the focus on Albertan and Canadian life... increase the focus on the development of a work ethic, increase a focus on debate, critical thinking, and respect for dissenting views, and eliminate all political indoctrination.” The NDP also passed Bill 24 in 2017, which protects the privacy of students forming or joining gay-straight and queer-straight alliance groups at their schools. It also requires school principals to permit the establishment of an alliance group if requested by one or more students. But the UCP’s 2018 policy declaration states they want to “reinstate parental opt-in consent for any subjects of a religious or sexual nature, including enrollment in extracurricular activities/clubs.” This has been a contentious issue within the UCP itself, with members speaking out against the policy directive. Kenney himself has said that a “United Conservative government will not be changing law or policy to require notification of parents when kids join GSAs. We will not do that. You can take that to the bank.” Kenney has a socially conservative history, including anti-abortion views and voting against same-sex marriage as a federal MP in 2005. He has since stated that his views
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have evolved and he backed a motion in 2016 to remove the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman from the Conservative Party’s policy book. Some work the NDP has done in regard to Albertan health includes passing Bill 9 in May 2018, which mandates no-protest zones within a minimum of 50 metres of an abortion clinic. The NDP also approved the construction of the new Calgary Cancer Centre, which is currently expected to open in 2023. They also committed $65 million over four years to update the Misericordia Hospital in Edmonton in 2018. On the other hand, the UCP says it supports privately-funded, privately-delivered health services in hopes of addressing excessive wait times and making public health services more accountable. The Alberta Party said in a position statement that it will strive to achieve fiscal sustainability in regards to health care. One of the ways they say they’ll cut costs
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is by eliminating Alberta Health Services positions unfilled for longer than a year. They would also like to increase resources for long-term care, options for rehabilitation, and flexibility for patients to receive treatment at home.
RECONCILIATION WITH INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES In 2018, the NDP instituted a three-year program in which all provincial government officials will attend a sixhour session designed by a number of Indigenous groups to help them better understand Indigenous culture and history. That year, they also announced they will invest up to $6 million to support Indigenous languages being taught in schools from kindergarten to Grade 12. This funding will be divided over two years, with $4 million dollars supporting teacher training and $2 million investing in organizations that are developing Indigenous language resources. The UCP’s 2018 policy declaration has a section titled “Indigenous” which lists: “collaborate with Indigenous communities to strengthen economic opportunities and entrepreneurship” and “undertake and mandate accountability and transparency into all provincially funded Indigenous programs” as their directives, and “recognizing and treating all Albertans as equal under the law” as their main goal. The Alberta Party said in a position statement that they are committed to working with Indigenous communities to fulfill the intent of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
ALBERTA’S POLITICAL CULTURE Harder said this election will also be important in determining whether there has been a change in Alberta’s political culture. Many Albertans believe the NDP won the 2015 general election because voters wanted to remove the Progressive Conservatives from government after 44 years in power, the longest political reign in Canadian history. The upcoming election will determine whether the NDP’s win was merely a blip, or whether it was a sign of a political shift in a province that had been conservative since 1971.
it really does,” he said. “The only way you can improve your democracy is by actively engaging with it. When you disengage with democracy, it just exacerbates the problem.” “The government that we have in the end is an accumulation of everybody’s perspectives and opinions and the policies we want to see and the world we want to build,” Melbourn added. “So if people don’t get out and vote, they don’t have a chance to shape that.” Harder said that before voting, students should get informed by reading a range of credible sources. She also said they should have conversations with people who don’t share their opinions or background. “If you’re feeling unheard, if you’re feeling that you can’t make a difference in the world, not voting will not help,” she said. “Political parties aren’t motivated by the non-voter, they’re motivated by the voter.” g
VOTING 101 Election day is April 16, 2019. The advanced poll days are April 9–13. According to Elections Alberta, you are eligible to vote in the 2019 Alberta general election if you are: •
A Canadian citizen
•
At least 18 years of age
•
An ordinary resident of Alberta
You must register to vote. You can register in person when you go to the polls or online at voterlink.ab.ca. You will need a piece of ID with a photograph, current address, and name to register. Possible IDs include an Alberta Driver’s Licence or Alberta Identification Card. If you are unable to produce government issued identification, you must produce two pieces of identification from the Authorized Identification list prior to voting. Both pieces of ID must state your name, and one must establish your current address. All forms of Authorized Identification can be found at elections.ab.ca.
SO, WHY VOTE? There are many issues that young voters have to grapple with this election season. But one of the many reasons why youth voter turnout is so low could be due to the common misconception that young voices don’t matter. Darren Choi, a fourth-year political science student and the Alberta Party on Campus co-president, challenged this misconception. “There’s a perception that your vote doesn’t matter, that you can’t really affect government, but
*As there are many more issues than can be dissected in one feature, this article is not exhaustive. It only contains information available before the election was called on March 19. We encourage you to seek out more information before voting.
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editorial
The Gateway’s autonomy should be preserved. TEXT ANDREW MCWHINNEY, SOFIA OSBORNE & OUMAR SALIFOU
O
n March 7, 2002, during the Students’ Union elections, The Gateway won a referendum to become independent from the SU with 71.4 per cent of the vote. Until then, The Gateway had been the largest non-autonomous student publication in the country. Being owned by the SU meant immense pressure from student politicians with blatant conflicts of interest. It meant red tape and bureaucracy. It meant editors and writers were muzzled by the fear of having their salaries or positions cut if they didn’t toe the line. It meant the media wasn’t free. Now, The Gateway has been independent for over 15 years. We’re run by the Gateway Student Journalism Society, and we can make our own decisions about our organization and our future. But sometimes it feels like we’re sliding backwards. It seems there are student politicians who forget about that important referendum in 2002, who forget that students overwhelmingly voted to get The Gateway out from under the SU’s thumb. SU executives, councillors, and candidates are often quick to rush to condemnation over perceived negative coverage. If a bylaw or policy implementation process is flawed, we’re almost always the first to notice and criticize it using our platform. If our writers think a candidate in the SU elections isn’t up for the task, we are often the only ones to critique them publicly. This goes back to our mandate: to serve the 30,000 undergraduate students
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who pay our mandatory dedicated fee unit. This means constant reporting: every meeting of Students’ Council, General Faculties Council, and the Board of Governors is attended and reported on by our organization. We also do our best to keep these bodies accountable through our opinion section, which challenges anti-student policies and oversights in decision-making. While we understand that not everyone is properly trained to understand the role of media in criticizing an institution’s ideas, conduct, and decisions, it’s important for people to respect these critiques as a crucial aspect of The Gateway’s mandate to students. Sometimes, though, people aren’t just ignorant, and attacks are still launched at unfavorable coverage of the SU by student politicians. We have seen our coverage blamed for making students unengaged with SU politics, as well as discouraging people from running in SU executive and council elections. We are told that we are being too negative, that harshness isn’t going to make SU politics any better. But this, fundamentally, isn’t true. The Gateway is not a public relations branch of the Students’ Union or the university, and our job is not to foster a positive environment on campus. As journalists, our job is to hold power to account, and that’s not always rosy. With that in mind, it’s important that we challenge these attacks and remind student politicians that our
mandate, reporting, and critiques aren’t meant to appease the SU, but rather to inform, challenge, and engage the student population. Without these critiques, things like the Student Events Initiative, whose 2018 SU election campaign failed to tell students at forums exactly how much they’d be paying for the expensive fee, might have passed. Without extensive coverage, the student spaces levy may have ended up on this year’s ballot, despite it being an initiative that was poorly communicated to students and lacking in consultation. Without fact-checking, executive candidates would be able to pass along misleading information as fact during their election campaigns. Without these critiques, students are at the mercy of an organization portraying itself without outside scrutiny, which is a clear conflict of interest. When student politicians challenge The Gateway for daring to hold them to account, it speaks volumes about the attitudes some of them have regarding democratic accountability. We cannot fall back into the pre-autonomy days, where reporting was curtailed and student journalists lived in fear of SU retaliation. And not only can we not; we will not. We will continue to exercise our freedom in order to serve the interests of students, all the while refusing to bend to unwarranted demands for us to silence ourselves. g
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DIVER SIONS
HOROSCOPES TEXT ELIF ATILA VISUALS JESSICA TANG
Aries Your feminism needs to be intersectional. Don’t buy the shirt that’s made in China and says “feminism” on it. Cancer Instead of crying about why things aren’t changing, go out and vote this year. Taurus Yes, “Men are trash” can be a political statement.
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Virgo Don’t politicize everything. Sometimes it was just an accident and he wasn’t mansplaining. Pisces Your heart is at sea, so use less plastic or clean the ocean. It’s your home.
Leo Your Obama-like charm will help you succeed in the long run. Just don’t speak too much in class.
DIVER SIONS
Aquarius Take up space from white men in your class this month. It’s okay if they don’t speak for once.
Libra Pick a side. Being neutral on important topics is perpetuating even more violence.
Scorpio No, you can’t say “Women are trash.”
Capricorn Call out your racist professor and demand more readings from people of colour. Put him in his place.
Sagittarius Cut off that friend whose political views negatively affect the lives of others.
Gemini Your identity crisis won’t be resolved by eating butter chicken from Remedy. Try an actual Indian restaurant. g
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CROSSWORD
TEXT ELIF ATILA
ACROSS 4 This person once said, “The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.” 7 The famous revolutionary who once lived in Algeria and conceptualized this radical idea, which reads: “Violence is man recreating himself.” 10 Very charming, has an English degree, boxes. He’s also the leader of Canada. 11 Placing minority people in places that they are not typically found. For example: in certain jobs, organizations, schools, etc. 12 For this person, humans are inherently brutal and do not know right from wrong. 13 Human nature, according to this person, is self-interested. Their affection for others is dependent on how they feel, and they are selfish and ungrateful.
DOWN 1 The taking of a particular object, culture, or ideology and using it without the permission or acknowledgement of the owner. 2 The system benefits these groups of people over others due to their innate privilege in society. 3 The forceful occupation of land which leads to the exploitation of people, resources, and culture. 5 The racist rejection and phobia of Muslims and Islam that is most commonly used as a political tool. 6 A settler colonial state, home to the U of A. 8 This person married an aristocrat and was the editor of a newspaper called Rheinsiche Zeitung. 11 The term for someone who has fled turmoil, war, or corruption. 13 A settler colonial and police state that systematically and forcefully imprisons, displaces, and kills Palestinian natives on occupied Palestinian land.
Find answers on our website, gtwy.ca
Student Admission: $10 ($8 Matinée) Metro Cinema is a community-based non-profit society devoted to the exhibition and promotion of Canadian, international, and independent film and video. metrocinema.org
You are invited! Soyez de la partie!
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) April 7 @ 1PM A ship sent to investigate a wave of mysterious sinkings encounters the advanced submarine, the Nautilus, commanded by Captain Nemo. Featuring a live score performed by Maggie Hardy.
Breaking Habits April 20 @ 4:20PM, April 24 @ 9:30PM In the town of Merced, CA, a commune of activist nuns run an illegal cannabis farm, which they use to make medicine for everything from epilepsy to cancer, fighting against the authorities, the sheriff, and local cartels.
CatVideoFest 2019
April 19 - 25 CatVideoFest is a compilation reel of the latest and best cat videos culled from countless hours of unique submissions and sourced animations, music videos, and, of course, classic internet powerhouses.
Metro Cinema at the Garneau 36 | GTWY.CA 8712-109 Street | metrocinema.org
Metro Cinema receives ongoing support from these Arts Funders:
Jasper National Park
ANNUAL PUBLIC FORUM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 2019
Lister Centre, University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta • 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
FORUM PUBLIC ANNUEL du parc national Jasper
LE MERCREDI 17 AVRIL 2019 Centre Lister, Université de l’Alberta Edmonton (Alberta) • De 19 h à 21 h
7:00 p.m. 2018 Year in Review Superintendent’s Address
19 h Bilan de l’année du parc national Jasper 2018 ∙ Mot du directeur
7:30 p.m. Questions and Answers
19 h 30 Questions et réponses
8:00 p.m. Presentations State of the Park Assessment and Key topics for the management plan review
20 h Exposés Évaluation de l’état du parc et sujets clés pour l’examen du plan directeur
8:30 p.m. Questions and Answers
20 h 30 Questions et réponses
parkscanada.gc.ca/jasper
parcscanada.gc.ca/jasper
Important Topics
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4. – This person once said, “the beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”
1. – The taking of a particular object, culture, ideology and using it without the permission or acknowledgement of the owner.
7. – This famous revolutionary who once lived in Algeria conceptualized this radical idea which reads, “Violence is man recreating himself.”
2. – The system benefits these groups of people over others due to their innate privilege in society.
10. – Very charming, has an English degree, boxes. He’s also the leader of Canada.
3. – The forceful occupation of land which leads to the exploitation of people, resources and culture.
11. – Placing minority people in places that they are not typically found. For example in certain jobs, organizations, schools, etc.
5. – The racist rejection and phobia of Muslims and Islam that is most commonly used as a political tool.
12. – For this person humans are inherently brutal and did not know right from wrong.
6. – Also a settler colonial state, home to the U of A.
13. – Human nature, according to this person, is self-interested, their affection for others is dependent on how they feel, and they are selfish and ungrateful.
8. – This person married an aristocrat and was the editor of a newspaper called Rheinsiche Zeitung. 9. – The term for someone who has fled turmoil, war and corruption.
You can still volunteer with us in the summer.
14. – A settler colonial and police state that systematically and forcefully imprisons, displaces, and kills Palestinian natives on
tune in stream online volunteer Campus made radio since 1984 88.5 FM CJSR.com 0-09 SUB
Visit gtwy.ca for more details. APRIL 2019 | 37
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DEATH OF A COMIC
A.G.vincent
BY JERALDINE CHONG
QUALIFICATIONS
I don’t have that! https://studentsdesperateforwork.ca
Entry Level Job - Great for Recent Grads An exciting opportunity to work with a growing company. We are looking for an enthusiastic and motivated person to join our team. Qualifications: - 3 years of volunteering experience - Minimum 6 years of work experience
https://studentsdesperateforwork.ca
More Qualifications: - Has solved world hunger - Has won a Noble Prize - Willing to work weekdays, weeknights, ..weekends and in your sleep Full-Time Minimum Wage
38 | GTWY.CA
HYY YYW YYY YY ?!? !
DIVER SIONS
ILLUSTRATION CHRISTINA ZHU APRIL 2019 | 39