Quote of the week

“Oh, too bad…. I thought it was all kind of sexy in a ‘arrest me officer!’ kind of way.”—“Margie69,” posting on the CBC Web site, on the Montreal police’s camo pants and red cap look. Police went back to their regular uniforms this week after they and the city decided to settle the pay raise dispute via binding arbitration.

Inquest motions

The coroner’s inquiry into the death last August 9 of Fredy Villanueva, the unarmed 18-year-old shot by police in Montreal North, began yesterday, Wednesday, April 8, with preliminary motions before Quebec Court Judge Robert Sansfaçon. Presenting motions was the Ligue des droits et libertés, who argued against the police officers’ lawyers’ recommendations to keep their clients’ identities secret.

“We feel this could seriously affect the integrity of the inquiry,” Ligue lawyer Denis Barrette told the Mirror earlier this week. “I’m hoping that people, the media especially, will strongly object.” Barrette said police lawyers have tried to keep officers’ names out of court inquiries in the past, pointing to the Oka crisis and Mohamed Anas Bennis inquiries. However, given the public nature of their function, he argued, hiding their identities will give the impression that they are above the law.

Barrette and fellow lawyer Philippe Robert de Massy also argued that the inquiry must also look into the larger environment in which the shooting took place. Police operations, especially last summer’s anti-street gang Operation Eclipse, heightened tensions between Montreal North youth and police, and allegations of racial profiling have not helped assuage them.

The inquiry officially opens in late May and is scheduled to continue to October.

by Patrick Lejtenyi

Dirt at the Parc

Toxic air on planes, islands of plastic garbage in the ocean, an animated history of crude oil and the continued ecological devastation caused by the Vietnam War round out a four-day film festival of little-known depressing facts about the environment starting this weekend at Cinéma du Parc (3575 Parc).

Evenings on the Environment opens Saturday with a screening of Welcome Aboard Toxic Airlines, a film that documents poor air quality on Canadian flights. “It’s an issue that has almost never been discussed in Canada,” says Roger Rashi of Masse Critique, one of the sponsors of the festival. “Toxic air was being funnelled into the planes, affecting passengers and flight attendants.” The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Air Transat flight attendant Nathalie Stringer.

The second evening features Addicted to Plastic, a film about what happens to plastic after we throw it away. “The majority ends up in the Pacific Ocean. There are 18,000 pieces of plastic floating in every square kilometre of the ocean,” says Rashi. “The film begins with scientists going to an island of plastic in the ocean the size of a sub-continent.”

Evenings on the Environment runs April 11–14. All screenings begin at 7 p.m. See massecritique.org for details.

by Matt Jones

Meltdown explained

If you’re still trying to understand just how the apparent collapse of the global economic system has come about, or perhaps more importantly, would like to know exactly who to blame for the current crisis so you don’t mistakenly lead your lynch mob to the wrong houses, take note that eminent jurist and human rights activist Julius Grey will be speaking at a free public conference on the subject at Concordia University on Wednesday, April 15.

Sponsored by Citizens in Action, a group of “concerned citizens dedicated to economic and social justice,” the conference, entitled “The Failure of the Neo-Liberal Agenda: Where Do We Go From Here,” will be taking place in the Hall building (1455 de Maisonneuve W.), in room 1220 at 7 p.m. “sharp”.

Says Citizens in Action founder Nadia Alexan. “For years, we’ve been hearing from government and business that markets need less regulation. But here we have this financial crisis, and why? Precisely because of these policies. And over these same years, we’ve watched the disparity between rich and poor people grow exponentially. This economic crisis should function as a wake-up call to all those people who believed what they were told about trickle-down economics.”

by Chris Barry

Missing visions

Montreal activist Maya Rolbin-Ghanie graced the pages of the Mirror twice last month after organizing two successful conferences on Native issues. Last week, she launched a Web site dedicated to the cause of missing and murdered indigenous women (missingjustice.mvmnt.ca) and is putting together a more permanent group to continue the work.

Rolbin-Ghanie decided to get involved more deeply in aboriginal activism after the Walk4Justice rally in September, when a group walked from Vancouver to Ottawa collecting the names of disappeared Native women. In addition to the 510 cases officially documented by the Native Women’s Association of Canada, the group had 3,000 names of missing girls by the time they reached Parliament Hill.

“Across the country, the same problems exist and are either ignored or skewed by the media who usually claim that the problems result from girls with ‘high-risk lifestyles,’” she says. “There are strong campaigns going on in the West, but nothing on the East Coast at the moment and that’s a problem. Since Walk4Life, five native women have disappeared in Quebec alone.”

The first “visioning meeting” of the new organization takes place Saturday, April 11 at 5 p.m. at the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy (2110 MacKay). For more info, e-mail justiceformissing@gmail.com.

by Matt Jones

Rear-view mirror

13 YEARS AGO - APRIL 11–19, 1996

On the cover: Blood Sausage’s Costa, nominated for two MiMi (Montreal Independent Music Industry) awards. Along with a run-down of the acts playing at the Just for Laughs museum over the weekend is a satirical article about the rise and fall of Montreal’s “frog prog” scene between 1998–’99.
•The Office de la langue française sends the “Miroir” a letter and incriminating photographs informing “our publisher that [they] had received a complaint that we at the Miroir had violated the law by posting a sign that says MIRROR in our front window,” writes editor Peter Scowen.
•“I met Shania Twain,” says Coolio, in an interview punctuated with long pauses in which he was, according to writer Al South, “more or less asleep.” “She’s cool,” Coolio says. “Country as shit though.”
•“I looked at [Jim Carroll], and thought, ‘Gee, we’re not doing too badly for a couple of ex-junkies,’” says Montrealer John L’Ecuyer, discussing the Toronto film fest and his movie, Curtis’s Charm, based on a Carroll short story.

Angel >> Listening to scientists Whether it’s thinning Arctic ice, oil patch pollution or dwindling biodiversity, public warnings from scientists about looming catastrophes just aren’t heard. And no wonder. To people like James Lunney, the Conservative MP for Nanaimo-Alberni, science isn’t a priority. Just two weeks after federal Science Minister Gary Goodyear said his Christian views on the origins of life didn’t matter to his portfolio, Lunney told the House of Commons last week that, if Darwin were alive today, he’d re-think his assumptions on evolution—citing a weird theory proposed by a Seventh-Day Adventist, since disgraced as pseudoscience, as proof that life evolved according to Genesis. Good grief. When’s the next election?

Insect >>The OLF mucking around with gaming Further evidence that the Office de langue française doesn’t care about fun: as of April 1, it is no longer legal for a store to sell a video game only in English if a French version is also available anywhere in the world. It doesn’t matter that international versions of games use video formats different from North America, that the translation delay can last months, that the English game can be purchased by impatient local gamers across any border or that the absurd law might put local stores out of business. If the OLF sees an opportunity to make an ass of itself and life difficult for everyone, they can’t help but seize it.