Tag: CFS

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McGill grads vote to opt out of CFS

Remains to be seen if Canadian Federation of Students will accept referendum

Preliminary results of McGill’s referendum shows the “No” side has won an overwhelming 97.3 per cent of the vote, thus reaffirming the will of McGill’s Post Graduate Students Society (PGSS) and its 8,000 members to sever all ties with the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).

So far, results shows that just over 26 per cent of McGill post-graduate students voted in the referendum, and won’t be official until the university can verify all ballots. The PGSS website states it will be up to their next general assembly to ratify the referendum and its formal request to leave CFS.

This is the latest update in a long-fought legal battle taking place in various universities all around Canada since 2009 when 16 student associations tried to separate from the CFS.

The PGSS and Concordia Student Union (CSU) both held prior referendums to separate from the CFS in 2010, but no official action came from that since the CFS does not recognize these votes as valid.

In September the courts gave a nod to the CSU when it sided with the Rassemblement des Associations Etudiantes, the new iteration of the CFS-Quebec before it broke away from CFS, of which the CSU is part of. It ruled in a case by saying the RAE’s predecessor was a legitimate provincial CFS chapter, and that the RAE was therefore entitled to all provincial membership fees and one sixth of national fees from Quebec members during CFS-Q’s lifespan of 2007-2010.

At the moment, over a dozen universities and student organizations are attempting to break away from CFS. Cape Breton University is set for a court date in January stemming from a successful 2008 referendum that was not recognized by the CFS.

In 2011, Simon Fraser University successfully settled out-of-court with the CFS after a similar legal battle.

When contacted to talk about the referendum and PGSS’ “No” movement, Nikki Meadows, PGSS Financial Affairs Officer and one of the association’s leaders, described the overwhelming victory as one of the most important steps towards separating from CFS, but said that the fight was not yet finished. A formal request to defederate still needs to be sent so it gets ratified at the next CFS General Meeting.

This last part has been the subject of tensions and court battles between the CFS and a number of student associations. In the past, the CFS continuously denied and contested members’ right to defederate. Meadows said that she hoped the overwhelming majority of post-graduates students voting for a break will help to finally help end the issue.

Questions and grievances over rises of students fees seems to be the major topic of disagreement between the CFS and its Quebec-based member organizations. There are other concerns. For Meadows, her own personal problem with CFS is also that for an association greatly advocating for relevant causes such as equality, social-justice and human rights, CFS often contradicts itself when looking at their relationship with members student associations.

“I have trouble supporting an organization that then supports and imposes rules that limit freedom of associations and freedom of speech,” said Meadows.

She also acted as the official liaison between the CFS Chief Returning Officer and PGSS during the referendum campaign and, after the vote, as PGSS’ representative in the counting and verifying of the ballots.

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Quebec wants to defederate

“Let our school defederate!” chanted over sixty students outside of Best Western Plus Hotel in Gatineau, Quebec, where the Canadian Federation of Students’ (CFS) 32nd National General Meeting was taking place, on Saturday afternoon.

Students from member schools across the country attend the meeting every year to lobby and discuss the current campaigns of the organization. This time, however, Quebec students stood in protest against the CFS for not letting them discontinue their membership and for the negative attitude taken towards them.

McGill University’s Post-Graduate Students Society (PGSS) organized the demonstration with the participation of Concordia Student Union (CSU) leaders, Dawson College and fellow McGill students. Representatives from the University of British Columbia-Okanagan and the University of Toronto were also in attendance.

Six police cars surrounded the protest, and six police officers patrolled the area, one of them was directing traffic circulation. Protesters were prohibited on hotel property.

“I don’t want to pay my student fees to an organization that’s going to use those student fees in court battles against other student associations,” said PGSS Secretary General, Jonathan Mooney.

About 15 schools from across Canada have requested to cease their CFS membership since 2009. The CFS, however, has not recognized their petitions although student unions followed the process dictated in the bylaws of its constitution. Instead, the organization is suing most of these unions, claiming ‘uncollected and/or unremitted membership fees’ under the Acknowledgement of Debt Agreement.

The CSU and the Graduate Student Association (GSA) opted to withdraw from the CFS in the fall of 2009, along with 10 other voting members from Quebec and other provinces, including the Dawson Student Union (DSU) and the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA).

According to the CSU Motion to Institute Proceedings document signed in 2011 to counteract the CFS lawsuit for over $1M in supposed unpaid fees, the CFS changed “amendment of Article 6 b. iii. of BYLAW I,” in 2009, thus referendums are now limited to 2 per year.

In addition, the signatures required for each referendum increased to 20 per cent, instead of the previous 10 per cent. And 60 months became the “minimum period between referendums” and “to join the CFS” rather than 24 months.

“They are basically making it impossible to leave,” said Moore.

The amendment was invalidly adopted, for it missed 2 votes in favour to meet with the 46 votes required by its own constitution.

Mooney states that members are opting out because the CFS has not proven to be effective in representing them. For example the organization played no significant role in the student movement against tuition hikes in 2012. He also pointed that it is because the CFS lacks “transparency and accountability.”

In fact, there have been reported cases by Laurentian University and University of Toronto graduate students that their petitions sent by registered mail asking to initiate process to leave were never picked up and consequently returned.

During the protest, students participating in the meeting who joined the protest claimed that they had been verbally harassed and intimidated by staff members for not agreeing with CFS procedures.

“There goes the fat fuck again,” Mark Stewart, senior stick of Manitoba University Faculty of Arts, said he was called by someone in the hotel. He added that long-time CFS staffer, Lucy Watson, “insinuated I was an arsonist.”

“People are being told in meetings […] that information on the [CFS] budget is (quote and quote) none of their business […] this is the internal culture for this meeting and has been for a long time,” Brad Evoy, External Commissioner of the Graduate Student Union of University of Toronto (GSU), said in a speech.

“We spent a hundred and eighty thousand dollars on the CSF and they deliver us zero dollars in profit,” said UBCO Internal Coordinator, Sharman McLean, adding that membership of his school was “grandfathered” from the Okanagan University before it was purchased by UBC.

“We came here last year, trying to reform the CFS, now we just want out of it,” he continued, “we were attacked verbally and, actually, this time we’ve been threatened physically”.

The Concordian approached Lucy Watson for an interview while she stood outside the hotel main entrance, but she declined saying she wasn’t authorized to give any comments, and that “media [was] not allowed in the hotel.” Students there also declined to be interviewed.

Flyers distributed early in the morning under members’ hotel room doors said that “right-wing” students were plotting to discredit the CFS. Stewart brought his for demonstrators to see.

At 2:14pm the protest concluded.

 

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Concordia has strength in numbers

The Concordia Student Union and the Canadian Federation of Students are back at it again.

The CSU called a special meeting last Wednesday to address the ongoing lawsuit between it and the CFS, the nation’s largest student association that works at a federal level.

The meeting, with a brief introduction from former CSU President Lex Gill, was conducted in closed session to discuss the potential joining of the separate cases filed by the CSU and the university’s Graduate Students’ Association against the CFS.

Both student groups have been trying to leave the CFS unsuccessfully for years, resulting in a slew of accusations from the CFS that both the CSU and the GSA owe unpaid and mounting dues.

On Friday, Jan. 11, the GSA unanimously voted in favour of collaborating with the CSU pending the undergraduate association’s approval.

CSU President Schubert Laforest said the CFS has been notified of the motion.

“After a lengthy discussion where council weighed the pros and potential cons of joining the cases, council decided unanimously to join the cases,” said Laforest. “The CFS is aware of this but we haven’t gotten any response about it as of yet.”

This Wednesday, a motion will be brought before the courts to allow the merging of the two cases against the CFS so they can be tried at the same time.

In March 2010, the CSU held a referendum where an overwhelming percentage of students voted to leave the CFS. The association in turn claimed the process was illegitimate and barred the CSU from leaving. Similarly, when students voted for the departure of the GSA from the CFS in April 2010, the CFS refused to acknowledge the referendum.

Approximately a year later following failed negotiations, the CSU filed a lawsuit for the organization to officially recognize the results and allow them to leave.

In response, the CFS countered with their own lawsuit against the CSU in early 2012, claiming that the union that governs the undergraduate student body owed them close to $2 million in unpaid fees. Since 2010, the CFS has been claiming that the student association have an obligation to pay $1 million.

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