Like a lot of teenagers, Dawn*’s exposure to the Israel-Palestine conflict began with the horrific images of Oct. 7.

Unsure how to make sense of the violence, she poured herself into history books, studying the creation of the state of Israel, the origins of Zionism and the emergence of illegal settlements in the West Bank. 

Almost immediately, she saw parallels between the plight of the Palestinians and her own identity as a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) — a People whose land base, language and existence in North America continues to be threatened by colonialism.

“I think about it all the time,” said Dawn, 17, who did not want her real name published for fear of jeopardizing college applications. “The version of history we’re taught in school, even when it’s sugarcoated, is pretty consistent on these points: the Europeans came, forced us off our land, killed us and put us in residential schools. All because they claim this land is rightfully theirs. That’s exactly what’s going on in Israel. 

“Yes, Israel has a historic claim to the land, but if you’re not in that land for 2,000 years, you can’t just come back and start brutalizing the people who have called this place home. So, to me, it feels incredibly personal.”

In mid-October of this year, after days of repeated ceasefire violations left over 100 Palestinian civilians dead, Dawn snapped. The high school senior posted a story on her private Instagram account with the caption “Fuck Israel. Holy shit.”

Two weeks later, she was hauled into the vice principal’s office at Royal West Academy and suspended. 

“I was told that another student saw my post and that it made them feel uncomfortable,” Dawn said, in a telephone interview with The Rover. “(The vice principal) said it wasn’t my criticism of Israel that bothered them. It was the language I used.”

Dawn’s punishment was to serve a one-day in-school suspension on Friday, while the other students enjoyed a day off. After her parents reassured her of their support, Dawn decided she wouldn’t serve the suspension. 

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“When we told the school, they said that if (Dawn) refuses, she won’t be allowed into class Monday,” her mother said. “This is an honour student who is active in extracurricular activities being punished for taking a stand. It’s unacceptable that she should be reprimanded for something that happened off-campus, that wasn’t directed at any other student, and that’s a response to genocide.”

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the English Montreal School Board said the punishment is mild and meant to discourage students from making their classmates feel unsafe.

“When there is any type of situation like this, whether it’s someone verbally harassing someone in the hallway, or someone posting something on social media, and a student goes to the principal and makes a complaint, the principal is going to react,” said Mike Cohen, spokesperson for the EMSB.

Cohen spoke about provincial guidelines that allowed the principal to intervene in cases where a “demonstration of verbal, written, physical, psychological or sexual force which causes distress” to another student.

“This was something that the other students felt very uncomfortable about,” said Cohen. “The person used an expletive. A very bad word. So the principal decided, with the policy right in front of him, that the student would be suspended.”

One legal expert said the EMSB’s actions in this case are a clear violation of Dawn’s civil rights.

“It is a complete affront to our right of freedom of expression. You’re punishing someone for swearing about a country that’s, according to the United Nations, committing genocide,” said Geneviève Grey, a human rights lawyer based in Montreal. “This isn’t directed at any other students. It’s swearing, yes, but swearing is her right under the Charter.

“We’ve seen cases like this spring up across Canada, where someone uses strong language to condemn the state of Israel, and then there’s a campaign to have them reprimanded for their free speech.”

Speaking against Israel’s actions in Gaza has come with a steep price since Oct. 7. People have lost jobs, while medical and law students have been flagged by hiring committees simply for expressing Palestinian solidarity or attending a protest. Meanwhile, journalists reporting critically on Israel have been the victims of harassment campaigns organized by lobby groups like HonestReporting Canada. After being singled out by the group, some reporters received a deluge of death and rape threats online.

Grey, who is Jewish, says she’s alarmed by the rise of anti-semitism in Canada and abroad, but doesn’t think this crackdown against Palestinian activists is helpful.

“When we take seriously claims that are clearly not rooted in anti-semitism, but in pettiness, this fuels the anti-semitic lobby and fuels their rage,” she said. “You have to take this seriously. You can’t just say everything that criticizes the government of Israel is anti-semitic. It’s not true, repeating it doesn’t make it true, and it hurts Jewish people.”

Dawn says the student body at Royal West is almost evenly split between those who support Israel and those against the country’s actions. She showed The Rover a series of posts by her classmates equating criticism of Israel with support for terrorism, one from US President Donald Trump writing there will be “HELL TO PAY” in the Middle East after he assumes office, and other aggressively anti-Palestinian content.

None of these students were punished by Royal West. But Cohen notes that the school cannot intervene unless it’s notified about a post. The Rover emailed the school’s vice principal to ask if these situations had arisen, but we were redirected to Cohen.

Since news of her suspension, Dawn’s friends have rallied behind her, circulating a petition to lift her punishment and highlighting her contributions to academic and social life at Royal West. Dawn volunteers with special needs students, she’s part of the school’s band, and she’s an honour roll student.

So far, over 600 people have signed. Dawn’s mother hasn’t ruled out legal action and will be filing a formal complaint with the EMSB.

“We are proud of our daughter,” Dawn’s mom said. “We raised her to be curious, to be helpful to others and to stand up for her beliefs. We’re not going to take this lying down.”

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(this post is by Charles)

Applications for the MSc and PhD programs in statistics at the University of British Columbia are now open. The application deadline is December 1st for PhDs and January 5th for MSc.

Of interest to the readership of this blog is that we have a lot of momentum in the department for research in Bayesian modeling, computational statistics, and probabilistic machine learning. Amongst the new faculty hires, Saif Syed and myself are both starting research groups to work on algorithms for probabilistic modeling. And we have an established guard working on Bayesian computation, that includes Alexandre Bouchard-Côté, Trevor Campbell, and Geoff Pleiss.

Furthermore, the department stands out through its commitment to implementing novel methods in high-performance probabilistic software. In the department, you will find the creators and maintainers of Pigeon.jl and GPyTorch. And, as some of you may know, I’m myself a seasoned Stan developer. I’m also happy to report that we have some veteran Stan users on campus, notably in the Ecology department :)

We’re a quite large and growing department with interests that span all areas of statistics (not just Bayesian methods!). PhD students entering the program do not need to be matched up with an advisor upon admission—rather, you have one year to interact with faculty and explore a number of topics. The program does a really good job allowing and helping students do that!

Vancouver is a really beautiful and bustling city. The campus is right by the ocean and you’re a one hour drive away from hiking in the mountains. I’m new and still figuring out the place, but so far, I’ve found the quality of life here to be very good. By the way, it doesn’t get that cold, because of the ocean currents and we rarely get snow in the city (but we still have skiing nearby). We do get rain and somewhat British weather…

One final point: Unlike in the U.S., application to the PhD program requires a masters degree. However, if you only have a bachelor’s degree and are committed to pursuing a PhD, exceptional candidates can apply to the PhD track program within the MSc program.

Gasps were heard across a Vancouver courtroom on Friday as BC Supreme Court Justice Catherine Murray lowered her voice to deliver the verdict: that Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum, founders of Vancouver’s Drug User Liberation Front (DULF), were each guilty of three counts of drug trafficking — one for each substance they sold to members of their compassion club.

Murray’s tone was sympathetic to the defendants, repeatedly referencing evidence presented during trial, which — as reported by The Tyee and Drug Data Decoded — established that the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and police had been well aware, and often supportive, of DULF’s activities long before the pair was arrested on October 25, 2023. 

The maximum sentence Nyx and Kalicum could get for this criminal conviction is life in prison, but the judge ruled there will be no sentencing decision until after the defence’s next move: launching a constitutional challenge against the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA), which will begin on November 24. 

“There is no issue that the Crown has proven the essential elements of the offence of [possession for the purpose of trafficking],” Murray said. “However, this case is not that straightforward.”

Nyx, Kalicum and their lawyers declined to be interviewed Friday, but Kalicum said they will speak to journalists after the Nov. 24 constitutional challenge has been launched. 

Nyx and Kalicum started DULF in 2020 to address the growing toxic drug crisis, a public health emergency in B.C. that has claimed over 18,600 lives in the last decade. 

Their plan — of which they regularly informed both police and Health Canada, and sought legal exemptions — was to procure heroin, meth and cocaine on the dark web, get them tested at UBC and UVic’s drug-checking facilities to ensure no toxicity, package and label them, and sell them at cost in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to adult compassion club members who were already using drugs and therefore at risk of dying. 

That’s exactly what they did. For one year, between August 2022 and October 2023, DULF’s 47 members obtained their labelled drugs from DULF, and no one overdosed.

In that time, Nyx and Kalicum sought a Health Canada exemption under Section 56.1 of the CDSA in an attempt to carry out their plans legally. This was denied and that decision is currently under judicial review.

But in December 2022, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (VCH) entered into an agreement with DULF, giving the compassion club $200,000 to run drug-checking and harm-reduction services. 

“Vancouver Coastal Health considers DULF’s community Compassion Club to be an overdose prevention service as we believe that it has the potential to decrease the risk of overdose without significantly increasing risks to the broader community,” wrote Dr. Mark Lysyshyn, Deputy Chief Medical Health Officer at Vancouver Coastal Health, in a letter of support to Health Canada at the time. 

VCH did have a Health Canada exemption for checking, packaging and storing illicit drugs, which they extended to DULF through this partnership.

But, as the judge ruled, that exemption ultimately did not cover procurement and distribution of these substances. 

‘Backbench politicians’ and a ‘maelstrom of activity’

In her ruling, Murray made several references to the circumstances that led to Nyx and Kalicum’s arrest, particularly a 2023 article in The Economist titled ‘The drug dealers leading a public-health revolution.’

“The article ignited a maelstrom of activity,” Murray said. 

“The drug section of [the Vancouver Police Department], which was previously aware of DULF and the Compassion Club but claims to not have been aware of the DULF site, commenced an investigation. Backbench politicians voiced concern about the government funding an organization that was sourcing drugs on the dark web.”

In her ruling, Murray clarified that government funding was not used for procuring drugs, as the politicians contend — Nyx and Kalicum have specified they bought the drugs using public donations — but said government money was used for DULF’s drug-checking and overdose-prevention site services.

Nevertheless, the outcry against DULF from politicians like Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre led to the BC health ministry forcing VCH to end their contract with DULF. Six days before the contract was terminated, Vancouver Police raided the DULF site and arrested Nyx and Kalicum. 

One of the politicians who led the public outcry against DULF, former BC United and current Independent MLA Elenore Sturko, was in court to hear the verdict on Friday. 

When asked by PressProgress for comment about Murray’s allusion to “backbench politicians” and conclusion that public money was not used to buy drugs, contrary to what she has claimed in the past, Sturko stood her ground. 

“All I heard was a judgment that I think raises questions about funding that was provided by the government,” she said. “It’s disappointing that if the government was going to give money, that they weren’t more clear with these two individuals exactly what was exempt in their activity and what was not.”

DULF is the latest in a series of life-saving harm-reduction movements that were spearheaded by people who use drugs and were, at least for a time, deemed illegal. 

Canada’s first supervised consumption site opened in 1995 as an illegal and unsanctioned facility in Vancouver. Like DULF, it was a grassroots effort by peers to save lives amid a public health emergency.

 

The post Founders of groundbreaking Vancouver compassion club found guilty of drug trafficking appeared first on PressProgress.

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When Michelle Ferreri first became Conservative MP for Peterborough—Kawartha in 2021, the nature of her constituency office’s workload surprised her.

“I didn’t know that we would be focused so much on immigration,” said Ferreri, who lost the riding to the Liberals this April. 

By the end of her term, her staff had closed roughly 1,500 immigration files — but still had another 500 open. 

“It was the number-one issue coming into our office,” she said, estimating about 80 per cent of its caseload related to immigration. 

Her experience is not unique. 

Don Stewart, the Tory MP who won the Toronto—St. Paul’s riding to much fanfare in 2024, only to lose it back to the Liberals in April, says immigration accounted for a “significantly higher” portion of his office’s work than he had anticipated. 

Stewart’s former senior advisor Chelsea Gordon estimates about 95 per cent of their office’s calls related to immigration. The phones rang “off the hook,” she said. 

Both MPs say the volume of immigration casework is symptomatic of an immigration system that has become inefficient and inaccessible. 

“ When people came to us, it was because they were at the end of the rope with their usual channels with [Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)],” said Stewart. “And they weren’t getting answers.”

Systemic failures

The status quo described by Ferreri and Stewart did not emerge overnight.

In 2012, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the predecessor name of IRCC, abruptly closed 19 local offices and ended walk-in service. 

That shift centralized nearly all immigration service delivery through a single call centre and the IRCC web portal. 

The closures were justified as a move toward efficiency. But they effectively cut off in-person access to IRCC staff, forcing applicants to complete applications, upload documents and seek status updates online.  

“There was this explicit policy to cut off the public from civil servants and to use one call centre as the main focal point,” said Danièle Bélanger, a Université Laval sociologist whose research shows how immigration casework now consumes much of MPs’ time.

The call-centre model was meant to modernize service delivery. Instead, it left people navigating what Belanger described in a research paper as “a true administrative labyrinth” where inquiries routinely go unacknowledged. 

IRCC’s own data underscore this point. In 2018, only 22 per cent of the 1.7 million calls to IRCC’s public call centre were answered by an agent.

Ferreri says the effect has been to leave MPs’ offices managing the fallout.

“My staff became Service Canada employees,” she said. “I didn’t feel like we were a liaison; I felt like we were Service Canada. [We] were constantly problem solving … It was no fault of the constituent … It just always felt like they were being passed from pillar to post.”

Uneven access

Ferreri says she is concerned about the fairness of the current immigration system, which leaves MPs to engage with IRCC directly on constituents’ behalf. 

The handling of an immigration file should not be based on “who you know,” she says, or “having an MP to pick up the phone and call the minister to get something done.” 

In an e-mailed statement to Canadian Affairs, an IRCC spokesperson noted the immigration minister has the authority to rule on immigration cases elevated by MPs.

“Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Minister of Immigration has discretionary authority to grant exemptions or permits on humanitarian and compassionate grounds,” said the statement. “While MPs may bring urgent cases to the Minister’s attention, decisions are made solely by the Minister or delegated officials.”

At a September policy summit, former Liberal and Conservative immigration ministers Marc Miller and Jason Kenney both spoke to the pressure that the minister comes under from MPs.

“ I’ve often [had], as Jason certainly has … an MP call you out on immigration policy and then corner you in the side of the lobby and say, ‘Can you … cut me a break?’ 

“It’s almost like a drug deal. They’re like condemning it publicly, but then saying, ‘Gimme more of this and this,’” said Miller, who was immigration minister from 2023 to 2025.

Kenney made a similar observation. 

“ After question period, the biggest crowd that forms in the House is around the immigration minister, not the prime minister,” said Kenney, who was immigration minister from 2008 to 2013. 

“Because the number one pressure point for local constituencies is immigration files.”

Similar to Ferreri and Stewart, Miller said 80 per cent of his downtown Montreal office’s files related to immigration — and this was before he became immigration minister.

“It became 360 per cent afterwards,” he joked. 

“And if you can’t keep caucus members happy, or at least give them a rational reason [for not intervening in their file], they quickly turn on you. And those are the political dynamics of being the immigration minister.”

In its emailed statement, the IRCC spokesperson said, “IRCC does not maintain statistics on the frequency of Ministerial decisions taken after an MP’s advocacy.”

The spokesperson also noted the department encourages applicants to use traditional channels.

“IRCC acknowledges the important role MPs’ offices play in supporting constituents but encourages individuals to use official IRCC channels for application inquiries and updates.”

Citizen–constituent gap

Neither Canadian citizenship nor permanent residency is required for individuals to access the services of a constituency office.

Stewart challenged the fairness of this framework, noting MPs make an outsized commitment of resources to a non-voting demographic.

It “ doesn’t benefit everyone in the riding the way it should,” he said. “ The resources should be spent to benefit everybody,” he said.

Ferreri said she views overwhelmed constituency offices as a function of an overwhelmed immigration system. 

“[O]ur priority list was ‘constituent first’,” she said. “I don’t know that we had ‘Canadian-first’ [outlook], to your point, but it’s obviously … like … you want to treat the people who are Canadian— Too much of anything creates scarcity, right? So if there’s too many people, it’s going to create and overwhelm … 

“ I’m coming back to the cause of the problem: Why do you have that volume of caseload to begin with?”

Bélanger, of Université Laval, noted that for all the system’s flaws, the status quo highlights the value of constituency offices. 

“[A constituency office] sort of fixes a broken system in some way. It’s not ideal, but it’s really something important to most people [in terms of] finding solutions to a long-term administrative nightmare.

“It has brought families together. It has solved problems for employers. It’s just incredible … 

“I think that … it’s a contribution and despite, you know, the fact that it’s perhaps not what’s mostly desirable … for the time being, that’s all we have, that’s the best we can have.”

The post Have MPs’ offices become immigration clinics? appeared first on CANADIAN AFFAIRS.