A new group on campus is calling for the recall of the CSU executive.
Calling themselves Democracy, Sustainability and Accountability, they launched a recall petition on Friday. If the group is able to get 10 per cent of students, or around 3,800 people, to sign the petition a byelection will be held. According to the group’s spokesperson, Patrice Blais, the group has gotten around 400 signatures so far.
“We got roughly 400 signatures today,” he said. “That’s about 13 per cent, so if you keep the same rate for five days you’re at 85 per cent.” He said he hopes to get the required number of signatures before the end of the semester.
Blais has first hand experience with recall petitions. When he was a CSU executive in 2001-2002, his executive was also the subject of a recall petition, which resulted in the resignation of then CSU president Sabrina Stea and Blais becoming interim president for the rest of the year.
At issue is “the failure of the referendum, the attack on the sustainability action fund and the lack of accountability as far as their financial books are concerned,” said Blais.
Blais said the CSU needs to make financial records and other documents available to students at the union’s front desk, to be in accordance with their own bylaws.
However bylaw 15, the regulation that applies to documents of this nature, only requires them to be made available, “at its head office during normal business hours.”
At the October council meeting, councillor Louise Birdsell Bauer put forward a motion that would have required the documents to be stored at the front desk.
The motion was amended after CSU executives said it would not be physically possible to store the large number of financial documents at the front desk and expressed concerns over the documents’ security.
But CSU VP communications Elie Chivi said the allegations are false. “If you break it down, every single complaint they have is either false or has already been rectified, so I don’t understand why people are still harping on the past.”
He also takes issue with the petition’s references to the failed fall referendum, which would have seen a vote on cutting funding to the Sustainability Action Fund.
“Last I heard the referendum did not happen, it was the CSU executive that stopped the referendum from happening, due to the information that we found out about the CEO, so I don’t understand what the complaint is,” he said. “Clearly people are still harping on something that is in the past. The SAF still exists and the referendum did not happen so I don’t know why someone or a group of people would be complaining about that.”
But Blais said the issue is still valid, “it was passed by council, that referendum question, now they just cancelled the referendum. They’ve never said that question was null and void.” He worries that the question will appear on the next CSU referendum.
Chivi thinks the petition is connected with a challenge that was heard by the CSU judicial board on Sunday.
The challenge, filed by Birdsell Bauer, came after CSU executives changed the deadline for applications for the position of chief electoral officer (CEO).
Chivi said the change was necessary after the CSU’s computer server crashed on Nov. 11. According to Chivi the problem disrupted the CSU’s e-mail as well as their website. He also said posters advertising for the position were torn down.
“Given their explanation we found that even though they did violate the motion, their extenuating circumstances didn’t warrant any kind of sanction,” said judicial board chair Tristan Teixeira. “They’ve had server problems, network problems, technical mishaps, they’ve been trying to get the stuff fixed up, and basically their jobs have been made 10 times more difficult by all those technical difficulties, we’re requiring them to go explain themselves to council at the next council meeting and set up a time table to get a new CEO and to get new [judicial] board members.”
But Birdsell Bauer doesn’t buy it. “Number one they did not consult council, number two they claim they had a server crash, but I don’t really think the crash lasted long enough or justified the action on their part,” she said.
The petition describes the server crash as “fictitious,” an allegation that Chivi also takes issue with.
“They do not work at the CSU, they do not understand the internal workings of our server or our network and it’s exactly the same as saying the sky is not blue,” he said. “I am not here to defend something that is a fact, if people want to create their own reality simply to push their agenda, then be my guest. But don’t pretend that something isn’t true when it clearly is. It wasn’t them that couldn’t access their e-mails for a week, it was our staff and it was our executive. People need to just accept the facts that they can’t create lies and false stories simply to push their agenda.”
“It makes a lot of sense why councillor Louise Birdsell Bauer was advocating for a CEO being appointed in January, seeing as Louise and Patrice have formed some form of friendship and political alliance, it makes complete sense and her hidden agenda is not so hidden anymore,” said Chivi. “More importantly seeing as Patrice Blais has a vested financial and political interest it’s quite interesting to see that he is trying to recall the current executive . . . this is obviously an assumption. But Patrice Blais is a lawyer and the CSU, as we all know, goes through quite a few lawsuits – in fact with Patrice Blais, quite specifically, just a month ago at the referendum.”
But Blais said he’s not in it for personal gain. “Obviously I have the union at heart, I was very involved and I felt that what happened last year was totally unacceptable, when people resort to electoral fraud to stay in power,” he said. “Now we have the same kind of behaviour, when people don’t even want to respect the basic rules of democracy.”
Bauer said that while the petition was important “to give students a voice about how they think their union is functioning or not functioning,” she was not helping to circulate it.
She also refused to comment on whether she would run for the executive if the current slate is recalled.
Blais said that if the petition is successful he would not be running for office, but that he would support anyone who opposes the current executive.
