That’s right – our hands. I’ve been known to poke fun at friends who will refer to how “we’ve got a really good chance this year” or “Lou has been letting us down,” but even though the fans aren’t on the ice, if they didn’t take their positions at the sofas and bar stools of the nation, the whole wonderful exercise would be impossible. The game is played for our benefit; clearly, that makes us stakeholders.

Accordingly, the Stanley Cup is a source of uncommon passion in Canadians, as well it should be. Our culture is indistinguishable from that of our southern neighbour in almost all respects; Canada’s enduring and near-universal love for the game of hockey is one of the very few things that make us distinct. Despite the disinterest of some, hockey is a uniting force in our country, and a key element of Canadian culture. If it’s something that Anglophones and Francophones can agree on, it’s something that’s worth defending. The Stanley Cup is our handy physical symbol for all of this.

As the NHL players and owners enter yet another standoff, however, each new day brings our country closer to repeating the calamity of 2005 and allowing another year to pass without a new name etched into the Cup. This is no minor problem. The Stanley Cup does not belong to the NHL; it belongs to Canada.

This is not only true in a cultural sense, but also legally. Lord Stanley donated his Cup as a trophy for the top amateur team in Canada 1892, and it didn’t begin to be awarded to the top NHL team until 1926. To this day it remains the property of the Governor General’s office, maintained by two trustees. In 1947, as Maclean’s columnist Colby Cosh reminds us, trustees Phillip D. Ross and Cooper Smeaton signed an agreement giving the NHL full authority to award the Cup and determine the conditions for doing so. This is overstepping the boundaries of a trustee’s job description, but no matter: the agreement also specified that it lasted only “so long as the League continues to be the world’s leading professional hockey league.”

A group of recreational players launched a lawsuit in 2005 after the lockout caused the complete cancellation of the season. Although settled out of court and in secret, the part of the resolution that was made available to the public made clear that there is nothing preventing the trustees from giving the Cup to a non-NHL team if the NHL fails to hold a competition for it.

Unfortunately, there was no corresponding obligation to award the Cup once per year. Even more unfortunately, today’s trustees are Brian O’Neill and Scotty Morrison, both of whom have sat as vice-president of the League in the past. To the surprise of no one, O’Neill told The Canadian Press that awarding the Cup to a non-NHL team is “just not going to happen.”

This seems like a textbook conflict of interests – trustees O’Neill and Morrison are both former executives of what is in effect the lessee of their trust. If they had the interests of the owners of the Cup in mind – the owners being the people of Canada – there should be no problem with doing as Chris Selley suggests and organizing a playoff between the top teams in this year’s Western, Ontario, and Quebec Major Junior hockey seasons. (Let’s not forget that the Cup went to the top amateur team in Canada for decades.) I know I’d watch such a playoff.

In the same CP interview, O’Neill claimed that awarding the Cup to a team that had not won the NHL Playoff would “demean” it. Apparently, allowing it to collect dust because of a financial squabble among millionaires would not.

The truth is that O’Neill and Morrison will likely have their way, and that if the season is cancelled once again, the trophy will go to no one. It will be a failure that should be considered every time nominations are collected for the trustees of the Stanley Cup.

I won’t bore you with a history of the legal dispute between the Simon Fraser Student Society and the Canadian Federation of Students; one of the foundational assumptions of this article is that you don’t care. I respect that. You have no reason to.

You don’t need a full understanding of the details of the case, however, to know that something is fishy when the SFSS and CFS agree to end a lawsuit and to refuse to explain the terms of the agreement to their memberships.

This decision, for which I can see no intended effect other than to let those in charge of the SFSS and CFS avoid accountability for their decisions, should surprise no one; it’s entirely typical of the sordid, corrupt culture of student politics.

Even something as fundamental as your membership fees are kept hidden from you: if you’re an SFU undergrad taking more than three credits’ worth of on-campus classes, you pay $32.99 for one semester’s membership in the SFSS, but you won’t find that as a line item in your Go SFU account. Instead, it’s grouped together with many other student group levies (admittedly including The Peak’s) and hidden behind an opaque $65.64 “student activity fee”.

Student politicians may argue that members can find a full breakdown of that fee in the university calendar or the society’s annual financial statements. Nobody’s looking there, though, and I have yet to hear a convincing reason why that full breakdown can’t fit on every student’s Go SFU statement.

In an SFU student election, any voter turnout figure over 10 per cent is considered a miraculous anomaly. The most recent SFSS election had a turnout of 23 per cent, which is better, but still far too low for a legitimate democratic mandate.

Student politicians like to foist the blame for such numbers on the membership. If only people would get involved, they say, things would be better. But what incentive do they have to do so? It’s hard to start a taxpayer revolt when so few citizens are even aware they’re being taxed.

Most of the functions fulfilled by a student society could be better performed by other types of organizations. Why can’t clubs and departmental student unions simply be formed by groups of like-minded people? Is the university not capable of providing study spaces or event supplies? I love the Highland Pub, but would an independent business have any trouble turning a profit selling beer to college kids?

Student societies are also an open invitation to corruption. Consider the Kwantlen Student Society, where 12 board members were impeached in November. Those who were cast out had dropped a lawsuit alleging that former directors and staff had ‘misused’ more than $2 million in society funds. Whatever actually happened — the lawsuit was dropped, so we’ll never know for sure — the thinking is easy to follow: nobody’s watching this organization, so we can take money from it without consequence. If we’re caught, we’ll just have our friends run in the next election and bail us out.

Clearly, the status quo isn’t working. Student unions shouldn’t be allowed to collect millions of dollars from memberships that are barely aware of their existence, and they shouldn’t be allowed to hide what they’re doing with it. I have a hard time convincing myself that we wouldn’t be better off if we did away with the whole concept.

Fuel-surcharge increases announced by BC Ferries on Friday could be illegal, the B.C. NDP says.

The price hike, which the Crown corporation blames on the rising cost of marine diesel, will raise the existing surcharge to five per cent from 2.5 per cent on the three major routes connecting Vancouver Island to the mainland. It will also introduce a new 2.5 per cent surcharge on the Horseshoe Bay-Langdale route.

NDP ferries critic Gary Coons said that under legislation passed last year, “in my mind, (it’s) illegal to put in any fuel surcharges until October 2012.”

The legislation in question suspended BC Ferries’ power to make “extraordinary price cap increases” to account for costs such as fuel.

“A lot of people are seeing this as a last-minute cash grab by BC Ferries to try and do something with their $20-million deficit,” Coons added.

A BC Ferries press release notes that its annual fuel costs have ballooned to a projected total of more than $120 million this year, up from $45.9 million in 2003. That’s despite the corporation having reduced fuel consumption by five per cent over that time.

Coons also questioned the timing of the hike, which takes effect on Dec. 12.

“It’s just before Christmas, when people are trying to deal with travel and the cost of the December Christmas season,” he said. “I think it’s a bit suspicious that this is happening now.”

Occupy Vancouver protestors remained defiant yesterday with one day to go before a court injunction requires them to remove their tents or face arrest.

“The encampment is a political expression,” said protestor Jordan ‘Aleister’ Malcolm. “I’m trying to influence the minds of the police around here to defect and not take the orders … The police are part of the 99%, and it’s very questionable who they’re protecting and serving.”

On Friday, the B.C. Supreme Court ordered all tents and structures to be removed by 2 p.m. today and authorized the arrest of anyone interfering with the removal.

Tom A. of the Occupy media team explained that “people are going to act as individuals … A lot of people are going to move away peacefully, and not interfere. Some people have decided to link arms around their dome tents, and said they will peacefully but by force be removed from the site.”

He added that the media team will relocate off-site, but “we will leave a symbolic image, probably of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which they will have to tear down. A lot of people are going to do very symbolic things like that.”

Having withdrawn from the embattled Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, the Pivot Legal Society has announced plans to examine the condition of sex workers and vulnerable women since the arrest of Robert Pickton.

An insatiable appetite for connectivity is at the root of the decision to add a new area code in British Columbia.

Starting in June 2013, the new 236 area code will be added to the province’s current 604, 250, and 778 designations in order to refill a number pool that was projected to reach its limit by August 2016.

“Part of it is population growth, but a bigger part of it is the explosive demand for wireless service,” explained Telus spokesman Shawn Hall.

“People used to have one or two phones in a family: you’d have your home phone, and maybe somebody in the household would have an office number.”

These days, however, everyone, often including the children, have their own cellphones and other devices in addition to numbers at home and work.

Existing customers will retain their old phone numbers and area codes when the 236 area code is introduced.

Lauren Butterfield signs the book of condolences as mother Linda and brother Erik watch.

Vancouver’s modest Norwegian consulate can be difficult to find in its obscure location on the 14th floor of a Georgia Street office tower.

But Linda Butterfield didn’t let that stop her from bringing her children, Erik and Lauren, to sign a book of condolences.

“It gives them exposure to the good and the bad sides of life and how to deal with these types of events,” she said yesterday.

“Coming down and writing something shows there are ways to express feelings and share your sympathies in positive ways.”

Linda and her children each left messages for the people of Norway, who continue to reel after the bombing of an Oslo government building and the subsequent gun massacre at a youth camp Friday that killed 76 people.

Butterfield was born in Norway and has family there, but she said: “I think we would still be touched by this event whether we had family there or not.”

Jo Sletbak, minister- counsellor for the Norwegian embassy in Ottawa, agreed.

“Over the past three days, we’ve had six or seven hundred people at least signing the books out here, and many of them are Canadians,” he said.

The book of condolences will be available to sign at the consulate again next Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.