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The Parti Quebecois’ Education Summit ended Tuesday without a consensus. 

According to CBC News, the government outlined their plan to increase tuition by three per cent annually, which works out to about 70$ a year.

Premier Pauline Marois stated her content with the two-day summit and said it had a positive impact.

With the summit wrapped up and the decision declared final, students took to the streets of Montreal yesterday afternoon. 

Thousands of students made their way to the city’s downtown core to protest the tuition increase. Police say ten people were arrested for assaulting officers. Protesters threw rocks and snowballs at police while they attempted to barricade and disperse the crowds.

The illegal protest was organized by the group ASSE who boycotted the summit. 

According to The Link Newspaper, Concordia students with a disability pay the same fees as students without. However it seems they aren’t given the same access to university services.

CSU councilor Patrick Lefebvre, who is wheelchair bound, called for the establishment of a Disabled Students Attendants Fund to help fix the problem that affects nearly 900 students.

So far, little progress has been made. Lefebvre has been invited to two meetings held by CSU VP Finance Keny Toto but has been unable to attend.

Lefebvre stated that the meetings were too last minute. He said he was only given about 12 hours’ notice which isn’t enough time to secure adapted transportation.

Due to a lack of funding, Concordia’s Access Centre for Students with Disabilities has been limited to offering services related to academics.

Despite the lack of progress, Lefebvre isn’t giving up his efforts to improve accessibility for disabled students in all areas of university life. He says the only thing he wants to do before graduating is set up the fund.

STORY WRITTEN BY: JAMIE-LEE GORDON

Some albums must be heard on a good system in order to capture minor nuances in sound. The Man Who Died In His Boat, the latest release from Liz Harris better known as Grouper, demands a proper listen. Harris' ethereal voice, combined with simple guitar strums and multi-layered drones envelops the listener like a dense fog.

Over the past couple of years Grouper has received a lot of accolades for her solo work, and her recent side project with Tiny Vipers called Mirroring. But to date the album she is most applauded for is her 2008 release Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill. For fans pining for more music from that period of Harris' career, her new album is a collection of unreleased songs recorded alongside that album.

While Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill is a fantastic album because of its flaws, and its lack of continuity, the songs on The Man Who Died In His Boat seem to perfect meld together. This comes as a surprise considering that collections of unreleased material can often sound disjointed and unfinished, because that's exactly what they are – unfinished songs, sporadically put together.

With The Man Who Died In His Boat Harris has mastered the genre of dream folk. From the start of the album the listener floats between songs and arrives at the end without the slightest inclination that the end was near. While there are songs that stand out, such as the title track, or “Cover the Long Way”, the album is so perfectly compiled that it demands to be experienced in its entirety.

One song on the album that slightly stands out among the rest is “Living Room.” On most of the tracks Harris' voice is used to supplement the music, but on “Living Room” the lyrics are easily distinguished and are not muffled by layers of guitar and drone. It is the only lyrically-driven song on the album, and is the closest to sounding like a traditional folk song. 
The new album draws inspiration from Harris' childhood memory of investigating the wreckage of a sailboat. Inside were remnants of the owner's presence, but with no sign that the boat crashed or capsized, the missing owner was a mystery. Harris concluded that the owner “simply slipped off somehow, and the boat, like a riderless horse, eventually came back home.”

Like the abandoned boat floating on the open sea, Grouper's newest release will have you floating on a daydream.

FINAL MARK: A+

It was scene of deja-vu on downtown streets Monday afternoon.

In a report by CTV News, a protest march was called in opposition to the P.Q.'s intention to raise tuition rates by about $70/year.

Riot police and protestors clashed in Griffintown in a scene right out of last spring's "erable printemps." The SPVM announced that two people were arrested for armed assault.

It wasn't the only protest on Monday, as two marches with 20 people each took place earlier in the day.

Flickr Photo: shahk

On Monday, the First Nations took to the Tribunal of Human Rights to discuss the underfunding of child welfare services on their reserves.

According to CBC news, Shawn Atleo of the Assembly of First Nations says that thousands of children are being sent into institutional care when there’s a family crisis.

Atleo told the Human Right Tribunal that many reserves don’t have the ability to keep children safe and in their homes.

According to AFN and experts, an estimated 27,000 aboriginal children have been removed from their immediate families.

Today’s case is different from a similar incident that occurred in the 1940s and 50s where children were forced away from their homes and into residential schools. 

Back then, discrimination appeared to be the primary issue for these removals.

Atleo says the reasons for today’s removals are different and relate more to poverty and social conditions on reserve.

Flickr Photo by: Michael Ignatieff

STORY WRITTEN BY: JENNA MONNEY-LUPERT