Members of the Post Graduate Student’s Society of McGill University began circulating a petition last week, calling for a referendum on their membership with the Canadian Federation of Students. Concordia students should follow suit.
While the CFS, which is Canada’s largest student lobby group, represents students at a large number of universities outside of Quebec, CFS’s presence inside the province in minuscule. The only Quebec students represented by the CFS are graduate students at McGill and Concordia, students at Dawson College and undergraduates at Concordia – the only undergraduates in Quebec represented by the group.
Most of Quebec’s university and CEGEP students are part of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec. FEUQ is not only the biggest student lobby group in the province, but it is the only such group with direct contact to people in Quebec City who make the decisions that directly affect Quebec students.
Across the country, the federal government is becoming increasingly involved in post-secondary education. Education is technically a provincial responsibility, but this has changed in much of the country.
Quebec’s government, however, has not yielded its jurisdiction over post secondary issues to the federal government like the other provinces. Quebec students only receive provincial loans and bursaries, instead of (the much less generous) federal aid.
The Ottawa-based CFS may be effective in provinces where post secondary education is less of a provincial matter, or where they have more members, but tuition fees in Quebec are fixed, and auxiliary fees are regulated – in Quebec City, not in Ottawa.
When it comes to lobbying government there is strength in numbers, how can a lobby group represent undergraduates to the provincial government when they only represent one school. Why are Concordia undergrads paying almost $300,000 when we are essentially going it alone?
Membership in the CFS also gives Concordia access to a health plan our student union rejected this summer; Travel Cuts (which isn’t that cheap); and the CSU gets to print their handbook on more sustainable paper, at a cost comparable to what they would have paid for regular paper.
Furthermore, the CFS’s main issue, tuition fees, does not seem to resonate with Concordia students. Even the most extreme case, that of international students, can only draw around 50 people to the now-annual protests.
Concordia students seem to know this is probably the best place in the country to be a university student.
Quebec provincial law gives legal autonomy and standing to student organizations, and tuition fees in the province are among the lowest in the country. Students seem to have realized that a huge governmental reinvestment in post secondary education is a pipe dream. No federal party that stands a chance of being elected would do it. So it is in our best interest focus our energies on the provincial government – to ensure tuition increases are, at least, predictable and the money is reinvested in universities.
Financial affairs at the Quebec chapter of the CFS have repeatedly been subject to question and criticism. It has also been the subject of repeated power squabbles, with the group shut down by court order for much of 2006-2007 after two competing boards attempted to take control.
The McGill petition needs to receive 700 signatures, at which point the referendum will automatically be triggered. Sadly though, the CFS has made it difficult for students to withdraw. Referendums like these often end up before the courts, sometimes for years at a time. A recent case in British Columbia, related to a referendum at Simon Fraser University, was essentially thrown out of court because the judge recognized the excessive cost to students across the country.
“The cost of this litigation, no matter which party or parties are successful, will be borne by post-secondary students enrolled at SFU, as well as by students at those institutions which are members of the CFS,” wrote B.C. Supreme Court Judge Richard Blair.
For an organization that claims to care about student finances this is a strange way to treat them.
This isn’t about student politics or other bullshit, this is about dollars and cents, and effectiveness. Our membership in the CFS serves no purpose, they take far more than they give. Concordia students are already represented by a group that is more effective than the CFS, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain from disassociating ourselves from the group.
The power of memory
The architect of our past.
