The Tribune

Justin Trudeau, the Liberal MP for the northern Montreal riding of Papineau, served as the keynote speaker at the McGill Model United Nations conference on Thursday. Trudeau, the son of the late prime minister, sat down with the Tribune to discuss his undergraduate days at McGill, prorogation, and his life outside of politics.

In 2003, Stephen Harper, then the leader of the Canadian Alliance, and Peter MacKay, the Progressive Conservatives’ leader, shook hands to celebrate the merger of their two right-leaning parties. That handshake, political commentator Chantal Hébert argues, changed the Canadian political landscape more than any other event of the decade.

Students Supporting Wikipedia, a new McGill club, officially received its interim club status on January 21. The group aims to raise money for the Wikipedia Foundation, and offer contributions to the popular web-based encyclopaedia. The young club currently consists of five executives and eight official members.

Despite the heavy snowfall outside, students and professors showed up last Friday to hear Antoinette Handley discuss how the AIDS epidemic has shaped the moral and political economy in South Africa. Handley, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, is well-known for her research on the subject.

Last Thursday concluded the Winter 2010 student fee opt-out period, which had begun two weeks earlier on January 14, and the current academic year has seen the highest level of opt-outs ever. Each semester McGill gives students a two-week window during which they can, through the online Minerva service, opt out of several fees that support Students’ Society and faculty association groups and funds, as well as a pair of independent student groups: the McGill chapter of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) and Radio CKUT.

This past week, McGill hosted the 20th annual McGill Model United Nations conference, a series of simulations where delegates debate and draft proposals to deal with past, present, and future international issues. The four-day event opened with Canadian Member of Parliament and McGill alumnus Justin Trudeau’s keynote address, in which he encouraged students to be politically involved.

With a proposed 67 per cent funding cut for the upcoming year, McGill Athletics’ Level II teams will face some drastic changes in the near future. Funding for McGill varsity teams is based on a three-level tiered system. The 2010-11 McGill Athletics and Recreation budget proposal, released last week, would cut Level II funding by $147,871, making the total amount $73,163, compared to $221,034 last year.

The McGill administration’s decision to switch to a self-funded model for its Master of Business Administration program, which would forgo provincial funding by substantially raising tuition, has recently drawn criticism from the provincial government. McGill’s Board of Governors originally approved the switch to a self-funded program at a meeting in July.