Canadian universities abandoning the CFS

Cracks are starting to show in Canada’s largest national students’ group. In the past month, three student unions from all across the country have held successful referendums to abandon the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) – a multi-million dollar student lobbying organization.
Despite the unions’ victories at the ballot box, the CFS has refused to recognize referendums held at Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton University (CBU) and Simon Fraser University (in BC). Both schools are the largest members of the CFS in their respective provinces, and the CFS has claimed that the referendums were not conducted in accordance with the rules for leaving the organization.
Another referendum, which had been scheduled for March at Kwantlen University College, (also in BC) was delayed when the CFS took Kwantlen to court, hoping to push back the referendum until fall. The challenge failed and the referendum is scheduled for later this month.
Despite CBU’s 92 per cent vote in favour of leaving the CFS, the organization refuses to accept the result.
“We sent our notice in, we had our referendum,” said Ian Lindsay, president of the Cape Breton University Students’ Union. “Now CFS has said it was [only] an opinion poll, where we have said that it is a de-federation process. As far as we’re concerned we’re no longer members and we will not pay CFS fees.”
“We had two protests here at Cape Breton University . CFS did not come and support us,” he said. “We are the largest school in Nova Scotia, from a financial perspective, to pay fees to CFS. Yet this year, since September, there has been no CFS representative on our campus once. So we don’t understand how they can be in Halifax and not take a four to five hour drive, when we are the biggest member. I don’t think that that is justified for any reason, even if we were a smaller member.”
Lindsay also believes that the Federations’ lobbying tactics, at least in that province, have been a failure. “Our tuition under CFS has only risen.” Lindsay believes that the tuition freeze implemented by the Nova Scotia government last Monday was the result of lobbing by a provincial lobby group, the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations. “If all the CFS schools were just independent this freeze would have already happened,” said Lindsay.
At Simon Fraser University, students pay $430,000 a year to the CFS. In last month’s referendum, 66 per cent voted to leave the CFS.
In 2007, Simon Fraser students voted 78 per cent in favour of leaving the CFS, but the Federation refused to recognize the results, prompting a further referendum, which the CFS has once again refused to recognize.
According to Fox, “there are serious questions about CFS-BC budgets and audits.”
She went on to note that many students believe the CFS has backed specific slates in past student elections – allegations highlighted in the October 2006 impeachment of the Student Society’s president – not a student at the time – who many believed to have been backed by the CFS.
“The [election] scandal mostly drove the campaign last year,” said Fox. “This year it was more about the CFS’s failure to recognize the previous referendum.”
While the CFS has not yet taken legal action against either school, both Lindsay and Fox acknowledge that remains a possibility. At Simon Fraser the Student Society’s board voted last week to file a petition in court to make the referendum official. Fox said the move could prevent a situation like that at Acadia University, in Nova Scotia, where the CFS took legal action over a de-federation referendum ten years after the fact.
Here at Concordia, where students pay around $230,000 to the CFS and it’s provincial component, CFS-Q; a de-federation referendum may be in the cards next year for the Graduate Student Association.
But Noah Stewart VP communications for the Concordia Student Union, and a former CFS campaign co-coordinator, said that the Federation has been good for the school.
He says that by purchasing handbooks through the CFS, the CSU saved $15 000 to $20 000 and was able to get more environmentally friendly handbooks.
Despite repeated attempts and correspondence with both the CFS’s National Chairperson, Amanda Aziz and National Deputy Chairperson, Brent Farrington, neither of the Federation’s two top officials were available for comment.