The Tribune

Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc announced last week that the Quebec government will fully fund up to three cycles of in-vitro treatment for infertile couples. This announcement, which fulfills a pre-election promise made by Jean Charest in 2008, makes Quebec the first province to adopt such a policy.

Last week, 10 McGill Tribune editors were forced to take leaves of absence in order to campaign for the creation of a $3 fee to support an independent Tribune. And while we’re ecstatic that students voted “yes” to the fee, the bylaw that required half of our editorial board to resign needs to be changed.

One of the best things about the Olympic Games is its commitment to gender equality. Eschewing the common male-dominated athletic hierarchy, almost every event in both the Summer and Winter Games awards medals to both genders as equals. And after some of the great female athletic performances we’ve witnessed during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics – by Joannie Rochette, Petra Majdic, and Clara Hughes, to name just a few – it has been refreshing to see people who normally ignore women’s sports sit up and take notice.

Haven Books was doomed from the start. In March 2007, the Students’ Society paid approximately $40,000 for a consignment bookstore in a poor location, with an unmemorable name and a bad business model. They did so despite a Memorandum of Agreement with McGill that prevented SSMU from advertising the bookstore on campus, and a report from their auditing firm that showed Haven had lost about $95,000 in the previous year.

If there’s one thing the Students’ Society’s biannual General Assembly does a good job of, it’s helping to discredit – on both an intellectual and a practical level – direct democracy, or at least the twisted, substandard version we will once again be exposed to tomorrow afternoon.

Next year’s projected budget for McGill Athletics (see cover story), which includes a 67 per cent funding cut for Level II varsity sports, is a sign that the first round of funding cuts have begun at McGill, as the university attempts to reduce a projected $14-million deficit within the next year.

The latest round in the McGill administration’s ongoing feud with the Quebec government is much the same as the last. Predictable cries of “accessibility” are again pitted against claims of underfunding, as the sides face-off over a proposed tuition increase for McGill Master of Business Administration students.

In a province with a severe physician shortage, it is somewhat surprising that only 35 per cent of foreign-trained doctors who pass the exams required to practice medicine in Quebec are granted residency positions. Last week, however, Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc took an important step in addressing this issue when he announced that the province will reserve 65 residency spots per year for foreign-trained doctors.

It has been one week since an earthquake measuring 7.0 in magnitude struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, devastating the country’s infrastructure and sparking a humanitarian disaster. The Red Cross has confirmed that 50,000 people are dead, while Haitian officials say the death toll could be as high as 200,000.

The Association of McGill University Support Employees is now the official union of McGill’s non-academic casual workers, receiving accreditation from the Quebec Labour Board last month. An October mail-in vote of eligible employees resulted in an overwhelming 85 per cent of casual workers voting in favour of the union.