THE FRONT

Upcoming budget has community groups in a tizzy—ACCM’s sex ed toolkit—Missing Justice is missing money—Songs for animals

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “He’s mostly harmless, especially since the media knows he doesn’t speak for the government. I love what he’s saying.” —an “anonymous Conservative,” quoted in the National Post, on Maxime “we-don’t-need-Bill-101-to­-protect-French-in-Quebec” Bernier

Community on a budget

What can you look forward to in the next provincial budget? Not much, worries the Centre for Community Organizations (COCo). Based on our current budget and existing gov­ernment announcements, COCo thinks average Quebecers are about to get hit, hard.

A February 17 meeting (1–4 p.m. at 3680 Jeanne Mance, room 460) will break down what the upcoming budget could mean to you.

It’s worth your while to pay attention—topics will include healthcare, education and Hydro. “We’re talking all kinds of user fees and tax hikes,” says COCo’s Laila Malik. “The upcoming budget could have a pretty devastating effect on everyday people.”

According to Malik, plainspoken money talk is in order, as typical fiscal parlance can be “alienating, and pretty inaccessible for a lot of folks to understand.”

A wider effort to lobby the Charest government is afoot. COCo will join 100+ community groups at a May 12 protest to oppose new taxes.

Malik hopes the grassroots movement will send a strong message, citing the public backlash that led the province to drop proposed health-care user fees from its last budget. “When people really put their foot down, it has an impact,” she says.

Visit coco-net.org for more info.

—ELISABETH FAURE

What you need for sex

AIDS Community Care Montreal (ACCM) hopes to get Quebec high school students talking frankly about what’s on their minds (sex, duh) with a new “Teacher’s Toolkit.”

Available free online, the Toolkit aims to take guesswork out of sex ed, providing teachers with comprehensive lesson plans, free training and a list of community resources for things like family-planning clinics and help lines.

“This is a big deal for this province,” says kit co-coordinator Marla Schreiber. “We are looking to put this in the hands of teachers, so students who so desperately need this information can get it.”

The kit (sexedtoolkit.com) responds to a 2005 decision by Quebec’s government, phasing out sex ed in high schools. Currently, teachers must ram sex ed into their regular lesson plans, with zero training.

Results haven’t been pretty. Stats show infection rates for all kinds of STIs rising steadily among Quebec’s youth. “It’s appalling,” says Schreiber. (Quebec’s sex ed void can also have unin­tentionally hilarious consequences: One teacher recently came under fire for an overly explicit sex quiz with questions about anal sex, sperm and ethnic cock sizes.)

The launch takes place at the Old Port’s Science Centre Wednesday, Feb. 16 at 10 a.m.

—ELISABETH FAURE

Money and the missing

Three months after the federal government stripped its funding for the Sisters in Spirit campaign, which aimed to cast a light on the disproportionate number of Native women who have been the victims of violence, some are saying enough is enough.

One of those people is Maya Khamala Rolbin-Ghanie, a member of the advocacy group Missing Justice. The news in November that Sisters in Spirit would lose its funding came just as the gov­ernment announced plans for enhanced police powers, including wiretaps and fast-tracked warrants.

“It’s not rare for police and Native communities to have relationships of mutual distrust,” said Rolbin-Ghanie. “Native men and women are both highly disproportionately represented in prisons in Canada. Even though only 13 per cent of the documented cases have happened on reserves, and the majority have happened in cities, police tend to target the former way more.”

Before the loss of its funding, the SIS had documented 583 cases of missing or murdered First Nations women since 1980. But, says Rolbin-Ghanie, the actual number may be as high as 3,000.

The Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Women will be held on Feb. 14 at 3 p.m. at Cabot Square (the corner of Atwater and Ste-Catherine W.).

Visit missingjustice.ca for more information.

—CHRISTOPHER OLSON

Pet sounds

If your heart breaks every time you come across some irresponsible asshole’s abandoned pet freezing to death in your neighbourhood and would like to do something about it but can’t, local animal rescue organization Eleven Eleven has a simple solution for you: just show up for the Take Me Home Tonight benefit concert they’re throwing at Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent) Thursday, Feb. 17.

For a whopping $10 you’ll be able to take in a variety of sounds, ranging from bluegrass to folk to rock ’n’ roll, with roughly ten zillion local bands contributing their talents to the cause. “Eleven Eleven is unique in that we’re all technicians or medical professionals who work closely with animal clinics,” notes founder Caroline Ross. “We’re basically just a lot of people who’ve come together to help animals on a larger scale than we could as individuals.”

Ross says the goal of the benefit is obviously to raise funds for the organization, “but also to give people who wouldn’t normally volunteer at shelters or adopt rescued animals an easy way to show their support. All they need to do is come down and listen to all this great music.” Doors open at 8:30 p.m. For more info go to elevenelevenanimalrescue.org.

—CHRIS BARRY

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

10 YEARS AGO – FEB. 8–15, 2001

On the cover: The Donnas. “Ripping off the Ramones is part of the American way,” says guitarist Donna R.

•                 Chris Barry and his suicidal friend “Harry Glickman” strike out at a swinger’s club. His impression: “Music courtesy of Britney and the Venga Boys, with a lot of 30-ish couples in clothes from Cohoes sitting around on the club’s fake leather couches ignoring each other. The only positive exception being one plump Goth chick—who struck me as maybe having emotional problems—with her tits half pulled out of her bustier for a couple of enthusiastic clowns to chow down on. Yum.” Both leave shortly after being refused entry to the “mysterious orgy room.”

•                According to the Sex Survey 2001, scat play is “the one thing you would absolutely refuse to do.” One respondent explains: “It ain’t chocolate ice cream, no matter how much chocolate ice cream someone has eat­en.”

•                 Once Hannibal Lecter’s crush on Clarice Starling is revealed, reads the review, “Hannibal begins to feel like an over-the-top man-eating soap opera.” ■

ANGEL: Internet populist Stephen Harper For the first, and perhaps only, time in all of history, the Conservative PM makes it to this space, for kyboshing the absurd usage-based billing plan cooked up by the CRTC and the country’s big Internet service providers. Relying on selective, cherry-picked data, the majors claimed they had to cap monthly download limits offered by many smaller compa­nies leasing their bandwidth due to increased usage and the cost of outlaying broadband capacity. Given their obscene profits and so-so service, the argument struck many, many hapless customers as not only hollow but also gluttonous. The Harper government’s decision last week to promise to quash the CRTC ruling allowing UBB—which the commission is now reviewing “of its own initiative,” it unconvincingly claims—was greeted by a chorus of cheers a mari usque ad mare. Attaboy, Steve!


INSECT: Telecoms ditherer Stephen Harper But then, let’s not get carried away. Right on the heels of the UBB decision came a Federal Court ruling barring Wind Mobile, an Egyptian-backed cell phone provider, from setting up shop in Canada. Because of current Canadian foreign-ownership rules, the court said Wind wasn’t eligible to do business here. But the problem here is the federal tele­coms law. Harper said it needs to be reviewed to allow greater competition, but he hasn’t done anything about it in the five years he’s held office. Protecting Canadian jobs is important, but paying high fees in return for generally mediocre service is irritating in the extreme. Time to fix the law and give Canadian consumers a real choice.

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