Quote of the week:

“Every member will vote according to public feedback and to their own conscience.” —Mayor Gérald Tremblay, on the free vote for city council regarding the proposed Parc Ave. name-change, on Monday. Decision time is Nov. 27.

Choking on Clean Air

Saturday, Nov. 4, is the International Day of Action Against Climate Change, and environmental groups in Montreal are planning a march against the federal government’s latest Clean Air Act.

“Harper missed the Kyoto boat,” says McGill student and activist Mel Lefebvre, who is organizing a march starting from McGill University. “The Clean Air Act is comparable to Bush’s policies. As university students we want to show we don’t support what the government is doing.”

In the plan made public last month, the government effectively abandoned its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, pledging to restrict smog levels by 2010 and to halve green house emissions by 2025, by which time environmental damage might be irreversible, critics say.

Marches will take place across the world ahead of the United Nations climate talks that begin on Nov. 6, which will bring representatives from more than 180 countries to Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss timetables for emission quotas.

The march at the front gates of McGill (Sherbrooke and McGill College) starts at noon. The march joins a larger rally at Berri Square at 1 p.m.; contact Campus Climate Challenge McGill at cccmcgill@gmail.com for more info. —Samer Elatrash

Copper crimes

For years, activists have been demanding that the federal government make it possible for legal action to be taken against Canadian mining and fossil fuel companies whom they accuse of engaging in harmful and destructive practices in developing countries.

“The way that things are now, with voluntary guidelines [on respecting the environment and indigenous rights], just isn’t working,” says Gloria Pereira of the Social Justice Committee, a local human rights and anti-poverty group.

Scheduled to coincide with the upcoming Montreal leg of the federal government’s roundtable on mining and corporate social responsibility, the mini-film-festival organized by the SJC and others finishes up this weekend at Concordia’s new Arts and Engineering building (1515 Ste- Catherine W.), room E/V 1-605.

On Friday, Nov. 3, The Curse of Copper, which documents the struggles of the people of the Intag Cloud Forest in Ecuador against Ascendant Copper Corporation, a Canadian firm, will be shown at 7 p.m., followed by U.A.I.L. Go Back, about resistance to a mine Montreal-based Alcan is involved with in Kashipur, India. A discussion with Andrée Germain of Friends of the Earth, which produced The Curse of Copper, follows. Other films will also be screening over the weekend. Free. Info 514-967-6810 or visit www.s-j-c.net/. —Christopher Hazou

McGill shocks culture

Over the next two weeks, from Monday, Nov. 6 to Friday, Nov. 17, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) and the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) at McGill will be presenting Culture Shock 2006—“two weeks of events dedicated to exploding the myths surrounding immigrant, refugee, indigenous and communities of colour.”

According to QPIRG organizer Indu Vashist, “This year's events are committed to moving beyond the multicultural dribble dictated by the Canadian state to illustrate the dynamic nature of these communities. We’ll be looking at culture in a broader and more complex way, rather than a, ‘Let’s get together and eat samosas and now we get along’ type of thing. It’s more about looking at what makes our communities what they are.”

Highlights will include a lecture by the “Anarchist Panther” himself, Ashanti Alston, a former Black Panther and member of the Black Liberation Party who spent a decade in prison for armed robbery, at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 7, in the Lev Bukhman Room of the Shatner Building (3480 McTavish).

For a full schedule of Culture Shock activities go to ssmu.mcgill.ca/cultureshock. Admission is free for all events. —Chris Barry

Funding Festivalissimo

For the past decade, Festivalissimo’s quality programming has enchanted local cinephiles and proven that the breadth of Ibero- Latin-American cinema extends far beyond the melodrama of Almodóvar or the comeliness of Gael Garcia Bernal. But the event once again finds itself having to scrounge for change.

While promoting Canadian content and building a bridge between Latin American and homegrown artists has always been one of Festivalissimo’s mandates, federal and provincial cultural agencies—think SODEC and Telefilm—have never acknowledged its relevance on the local film circuit through funding of any kind. “If they could give us smaller fests only 10 per cent of what they gave [2005’s failed film festival organizers] Spectra last year, that would be more than enough,” says Festivalissimo’s director of programming Yuri Berger. Last year’s $124,000 budget was donated mainly by the city and private sponsors.

To support and celebrate its imminent 11th edition, Festivalissimo will be throwing its first-ever fundraising movida on 11/11/06 at the Centro Gallego de Montreal (4602 St-Laurent), with Iberian food, flamenco performances and live DJ action. Tix are going fast so to reserve a spot, call 514-737-3033 or visit www.festivalissimo.net. —Michael-Oliver Harding

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

11 YEARS AGO - NOV. 2–9, 1995
On the cover: Jean-François Monette and Peter Tyler Boullata, the local directors of Anatomy of Desire, one of the queer documentaries screening at Image & Nation. “Low budget documentaries made by queers are intended as part conversation with ourselves as part of our political evolution, versus fiction, which usually isn’t aimed directly at a movement,” says Boullata.

• A photo shows a policeman dispersing Oui supporters on Ste-Catherine after their referendum defeat, with the caption reporting “several fistfights” breaking out downtown. An article also describes how, following Jacques Parizeau’s “ethnics are to blame gaffe,” Algerian-born photographer and Montrealer Baaziz Ali-Krimo had his camera smashed and film destroyed. “They were yelling, ‘Fuck you, we don’t need you here in Montreal,’” he says.

• Chris Yurkiw gives the Smashing Pumpkins’ double-CD Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness a 6/10: “[Singer Billy] Corgan has his moments here, but one CD of winsome whining would have been lots.”

• In light of the referendum, letterwriter Gary Jewell expresses his disgust of Toronto and all it represents.

Angel >> Irrepressible.info Representatives from this joint Amnesty International and Observer campaign, launched last March, attended a UN gabfest held in Athens this week (it wraps up Thursday, Nov. 2) called the Internet Governance Forum. The campaign’s purpose is to get the world’s governments’ hands off the Internet and allow it to grow as a tool for free expression. They single out the governments of Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, China and Vietnam for cracking down on Net freedom, as well as companies like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! for enabling them. The campaign is asking for bloggers to post censored material from their database onto their own sites. To learn more, visit Irrepressible.info.
Insect >> Leaving greens at home Just when you thought the Harper government’s arrogance and oil-sucking hubris had lost its power to shock, along comes the news that they’ll be excluding environmental groups from Canada’s official delegation to a UN conference on the environment in Nairobi, Kenya. This breaks 14 years of tradition, going back to the Mulroney days. Aboriginal and provincial representatives are invited, although they’ll have to pay their own way. The government did not invite anyone from industry reps either, but seeing how beholden this administration is to oil patch interests, energy execs won’t have to worry too much.