To Council members,
Conservative Concordia is one of the eighty recognized clubs under the Concordia Student Union. Our mission is to be home for conservative students from Canada and abroad to discuss current affairs and promote a balance between fiscal accountability, progressive social policy and individual rights and responsibilities.
We became aware of two referendum questions that will be discussed at the October 22 Council meeting on October 19 that will directly affect Conservative Concordia. The first one is concerning budget cuts and the second one is concerning the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Firstly, the proposed referendum question concerning budget cuts goes as following: “Do you want the CSU to take the following position: That the CSU officially oppose the budget cuts to the education sector specifically, and the public sector in general, in favor of working with other organizations with comparable positions in order to seek alternate sources of public revenues as facilitated through the provincial, and/or federal government”. The portion “seek alternate sources of public revenues” means one thing only: increasing taxes of Canadians. This would undermine the standard of living of Canadians and prevent many companies from investing in Canada, which means less employment opportunities after we graduate. Also, the question suggests that the federal government made cuts to the education sector, which could not be further from the truth. The Conservative government has invested $12 million in aboriginal business studies, $40 million for internships in high-demand fields, $123 million to modernize the Canada Student Loan program, $800 million to the Canada Social Transfer for post-secondary education, $1.8 billion to support research in Canadian universities and introduced the Canada Student Loan forgiveness program for medical and nursing graduates who practice in rural and underserved communities, among others.
Secondly, in terms of the BDS referendum question, we denounce that the petitioners did not provide the full story, once again. We wonder why they always forget to mention that the greatest enemy of the Palestinian people is armed groups such as Hamas, who use funding from international aid to attack innocent Israeli civilians, including children. We strongly believe in the right of the State of Israel to exist and defend itself from these terrorist organizations, and find it shameful that the petitioners refuse to acknowledge that international humanitarian aid (our tax dollars) is going towards building terror tunnels and rockets instead of feeding the general population. We stand behind our Leader and Prime Minister who said in the Knesset that denying the right of Israel to exist is the new form of anti-Semitism. We denounce the fact that this type of rhetoric is still tolerated at Concordia University, in 2014, in our modern multicultural environment. We also do not understand why the CSU feels the need to interject in international matters they have no influence over, as well as how this resolution will contribute to the betterment of the Concordia student body.
Finally, we would like to say that the current executive does not speak in our name and we denounce their partisan attitude to govern only for those who elected them.
Michael Eugenio
President of Conservative Concordia
Head of openly partisan student group denounces “partisan attitude” of
elected officials who he acknowledges are “governing” for the people who
elected them; includes a paragraph in which he talks about his
favourite political party which, like all political parties, is no
stranger to criticism on the grounds that it doesn’t represent the
majority of Canadians.
With inane “conservatives” like this, no wonder left-wing students dominate the CSU.