Quote of the week:

“The main thing that’s surprising us the most is the amount of drugs that were seized—it’s like 45,000 pounds—and the fact these drugs were all for the Montreal market.” —Mountie Sylvain l’Heureux, on the RCMP’s seizure of $225-million worth of hash this week

Viger youth outed for Outgames

For more than two dozen street youth who demonstrated in Viger Square on Friday, June 2, the “out” in Outgames Montreal means eviction. Outgames organizers plan to turn the square, often used as shelter by homeless youth, into a fair ground during the games next month.

Private security guards and police will ensure that street youth don’t use the square, which will host music shows and stalls, an Outgames official says.

Jennifer Clamen, coordinator with sex workers’ rights group Stella, says she’s concerned about the impending evictions, adding that police will also target sex workers in neighbouring areas.

Clamen points out that “a lot of homeless kids are LGBT (lesbian gay bisexual transgendered) and it’s going to be harder for these people.” The irony, Clamen says, is they won’t even have access to the Outgames conference ($525 admission fee) on issues faced by LGBT people.

That some of the affected street youth belong to the LGBT community is news to Outgames spokesman Pascal Dessureault.

“First time I hear of that point of view,” he says. —Samer Elatrash

Canadian terror better

The People’s Commission on Immigration Security Measures, made up of ethnic, civil liberties and immigrant rights groups, released its findings earlier this week in Montreal, along with recommendations for changes regarding the prosecution of terror threats. But the recent arrests of 17 young Toronto-area Muslims on terror-related charges may overshadow them. The fact that the accused are Canadian citizens, and will be facing criminal charges in a court of law, highlights the contrast between Canada’s treatment of domestic versus foreign-born terror suspects, says Commission spokesperson Mary Foster.

“We’re still going to say, ‘Due process, due process, due process,’” says Foster, a longtime critic of Canada’s security certificates, which limits the rights of the accused. “We hope this isn’t a repeat of Operation Thread,” referring to the August 2003 arrest of 20 South Asian immigrants in Toronto on terror charges, all of whom were subsequently cleared. Foster says immeasurable harm was done to the individuals detained regardless of their exoneration.

If the accused were foreign-born, says Foster, they’d be subject to “security certificates, fast-track to deportations and an extreme lack of due process.” —Patrick Lejtenyi

Avenue Verte at four

It might well be that the days of cheap oil are behind us, but this grim reality doesn’t appear to have had much affect on the number of cars rolling in to the downtown core every day.

As City Hall sits down to re-evaluate Montreal’s urban transit plan over the next 18 months, citizens’ group le collectif Mont-Royal Avenue Verte is organizing hard to influence city planners to think green when it comes to urban traffic control. To this end, they’ve organized a march along rue Mont-Royal, leaving Saturday, June 17, at 2 p.m., from the Mont-Royal metro station.

“It’s basically the four-year anniversary of our collective,” says spokesperson Owen Rose, “and here we are watching the Kyoto Accord being torn apart in Ottawa, traffic congestion issues are worse than they’ve ever been, yet at the same time we’re seeing environmental awareness increasing to levels we’ve never seen before. So this march is to let [the authorities] know we’re still here, that our ideas are more valid than they’ve ever been, and that citizens are increasingly concerned with these important environmental issues.” —Chris Barry

Fair fashionistas

The atrociously dressed ethical consumer is in danger of becoming as extinct as the dodo, thanks to an upcoming event by Montreal-based group FEM International.

Organizers bill ModEthik, coming to Montreal on Wednesday, June 14, as the first fair trade and ethical fashion show in this city, showcasing designers from Quebec, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

“[The event’s] for consumers looking for an ethical alternative without losing their sense of fashion,” says Lis Suarez Visbal, director of FEM International. FEM International is a non-profit that assists women in Colombia, Thailand and India with advice on how to start small businesses.

People are also invited to attend a conference on fair trade and social responsibility earlier in the day, and to see a photo exhibition on conditions in the maquilas, foreign owned garment factories in Mexico.

ModEthik takes places at the Societé des arts technologiques, 1195 St-Laurent. Photo exhibition starts at 3 p.m., conference at 6 p.m. and fashion show at 8 p.m., party afterwards from 9 p.m. to midnight. Fashion show tickets are $25, $20 for students. —Samer Elatrash

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

15 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
June 6–June 13, 1991

On the cover: Laurence Jalbert, whose songs of heartbreak hit near home to many of her (mostly) female francophone fans. “People feel near to me,” she says. “When you’ve been thirsty, you understand people who’ve been thirsty. And I’ve been thirsty.” She’ll be playing at the Festival international Rock de Montréal.

• Advocates for the deaf aren’t thrilled about Cochlear Implants, a new high-tech audio receiver implanted behind the ear. “Hearing parents naturally assume the best thing for the child is to integrate them into hearing culture so they’ll be as ‘normal’ as possible,” says one.

• Albert Nerenberg and Catherine Bainbridge’s 40-minute video Urban Anglo tells the strange tale of Jimmy English, the short and overweight reporter for the Sublurban, who is accused of stealing the Mt. Royal cross. “It’s a conspiracy tale in which Quebec believes the anglophones are out to destroy independence,” says Nerenberg.

• David Shannon takes issue with the police’s stance that “there is not a serial killer stalking gay men in Montreal.”

Angel >> Quebec standing up for Kyoto Despite Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s public coziness with the Harper government, even he seems determined to represent the majority of Quebecers by openly supporting the province’s commitment to meeting its greenhouse gas reduction goals. In a rare display of consensus, the provincial Liberals, the PQ, the Bloc Québécois and Greenpeace are all on the same page when it comes to the embattled accord: save it. Charest has already said that Quebec will meet its targets (and hopefully get Ottawa to pay for it), and the PQ, Bloc and Greenpeace unveiled a new coalition called Sauvons Kyoto, which calls on Ottawa to respect the accord.
Insect >> Health Canada’s skewed priorities According to Julio Montaner, a B.C. AIDS researcher and doctor, and future president of the International AIDS Society, something is rotten with Health Canada. Its Special Access Program allows patients with serious or life-threatening illnesses access to drugs or treatments not licensed in Canada—which is fine, except that the program’s been used to allow 21,000 women to get silicone breast implants, while denying AIDS patients access to potentially life-saving drugs. Montaner says he has no problem with women getting boob jobs, although he does argue in a letter to the Canadian Medical Association Journal that maybe, just maybe, patients who need emergency access to anti-retroviral therapy should take priority.