The CFS campaign

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Here are all the interesting websites relating to the defederation campaigns at SFU, Kwantlen, and the University of Victoria:

Pro-CFS:
CFS campaign site for Simon Fraser University: www.yescfs.ca
CFS campaign site for University of Victoria Graduates: www.uvic.yescfs.ca
Camosun College Student Society site: www.cfstruth.org
CFS-BC ‘membership development’: www.iamcfs.ca
I AM CFS Facebook group

Anti-CFS:
Simon Fraser Student Society site: www.sfss.ca/independence
Kwantlen Student Association site: www.cfstruth.ca
University of Victoria Graduate Students’ Society site: cogitoergono.blogspot.com
WE WANT OUT Facebook group (SFU)
Kwantlen students want out of the CFS! Facebook group

Neutral:
The Canadian Federation of Students Debate – A Neutral Forum Facebook group

Also, the CFS has applied to the Supreme Court of British Columbia for an injunction postponing the KSA’s defederation referendum to the fall of 2008. The KSA has put up a site listing the documents filed by both sides in this case: http://www.kusa.ca/cfsvsksa
Erin Millar reported on this controversy at Macleans.ca

How extraordinarily pathetic….

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I have had a somewhat… lurid fascination… with that peculiar organisation known as the Concordia Students’ Union. Its executives, councillors, and bureaucrats have varied from time to time, and the the ideology of the current group differs quite strongly from the radicals that generated a great deal of controversy in 2001/2002. Accordingly, the current CSU controversy is purely internal, involving a ten month long dispute over whether two individuals (Steven Rosenshein [a former CSU executive] and David Korgut) who ran in last year’s general election were eligible to do so.

But since then, things have gone seriously downhill. A meeting held to deal with the issue raised far more questions than it answered. An opinion piece sums up just some of the craziness that has afflicted the CSU:

Last March, the student union Judicial Board (a body that is supposed to be the check on council’s authority) found two students, Steven Rosenshein and David Kogut, guilty of committing electoral fraud in the CSU general elections. The decision was allegedly overturned by the outgoing council in a special meeting.

However, the minutes of this special meeting have never been provided (Noah Stewart, spokesperson for the CSU, claims they’ve been stolen) and two of last years’ councillors have signed affidavits stating they were never informed of this meeting to overturn the decision.

….

The council-appointed chair of this circus, Sarah Rodier, took The Link by surprise when she admitted in the paper one day prior to the November council meeting that she did, in fact, see a copy of the minutes of the special meeting where the JB decision was overturned—but “didn’t recall” when she saw them or who showed them to her. Astonishingly, in front of the entire council and observers, she recanted, saying that she “didn’t recall” ever saying she saw a copy of the minutes. Is this enough information to call Rodier a liar? You decide.

Adding to the gong-show, Rodier didn’t see it as a conflict of interest to allow Rosenshein to vote on the motion directly involving him. Kogut was not present—he can be removed from council just by the number of meetings he’s missed.

….

The Judicial Board’s office—along with all the files and documents—were moved this summer without the knowledge of the JB members….

Then suddenly the missing minutes allegedly turned up… and CSU Council then promptly adopted a motion banning further discussion on the whole entire issue.

The Concordian summed up the whole issue with a recent editorial: Is there yet hope for CSU accountability?

Here are a few conclusions that I can draw from this:

  1. Support the freedom of the press! The links that I have in this blog entry are just a smidgen of the many news articles, letters to the editor, and editorials that one can find on this subject in The Link and The Concordian.
  2. Bring your students’ unions out of the shadows. By this, I am referring specifically to the shady meeting that allegedly had inadequate notice, and whose minutes were allegedly lost for many months only to surface much later…. This sort of dysfunctionality can (and often is) used quite deliberately to cover up power-grabs of various sorts.
  3. If things are getting really bad, then call up a lawyer. Here, it seems as though both sides are simply throwing around allegations and home-made interpretations of the CSU bylaws. This doesn’t lead to any kind of resolution of the issue, it simply leads to further bickering down the road….

From the 1981 Founding Congress to the November 2007 National General Meeting!

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I am pleased to report that my ‘Canadian Federation of Students General Meeting Documents‘ page is complete – based largely on the archives of the Simon Fraser Student Society – and now contains documents dating all the way back to the October 1981 Founding Congress [PDF]!

P.S.: If you have any documents that are ‘missing’ from this page, please email them to me!

National Union of Students (UK) to consider huge constitutional changes

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The National Union of Students of the United Kingdom, one of the world’s largest national student organisations, will be holding an Extraordinary Conference on December 4, 2007 to vote on a motion to radically amend the group’s constitution.

The process that led to this special meeting started when NUS Annual Conference voted to conduct a wide-ranging Governance Review. The Review was conducted by a panel that included both NUS executives and external staff, including a top staffer from NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations). A Green Paper [PDF] was produced and consultation was invited from everyone involved in NUS. The panel received feedback from hundreds of students’ union executives, staff, and subsidiary bodies, and held 12 consultation events across the country. This eventually led to the production of an 86-page White Paper [PDF].

The White Paper put forward a wide variety of recommendations, often drawing on existing work in the wider voluntary sector on ‘Good Governance’ (the Institute on Governance being the best Canadian example of this). It recommended concepts such as developing formal links with national student organisations that are not students’ unions, per se*, and incorporating the organization (as NUS is currently unincorporated). All in all, very interesting ideas.

The most radical recommendation in the Report is the proposal to develop a bi-cameral governance structure. Currently, while the Annual Conference is the sovereign policy-making body of NUS, day-to-day decision-making lies in the hands of the National Executive Committee, an entirely elected body. The White Report recommends that this be split into two distinct bodies:

  • a Senate, which would be the political leadership body of the organisation, and
  • a Board of Trustees, which would have control over the finances of the organisations, and be responsible for hiring and controlling the staff

Furthermore, the White Paper recommends that a minority of the members of the Board of Trustees should be non-student professionals appointed for their expertise in legal matters, finances, human resources, etc., just like the Board of Directors of a corporation.

In any event, the recommendations of the White Paper were overwhelmingly approved by the National Executive Committee, and the Facebook group established to rally support for the Extraordinary Conference shows that most National Executive Committee members and local students’ union officers are supportive of the reforms.

However, there is considerable opposition to these reforms from the student far-left, who believe that these reforms are anti-democratic and that they will only lead to the further corporatization of NUS. Education Not for Sale (ENS), a far-left student organisation loosely affiliated with the Trotskyist group Alliance for Workers Liberty, has launched a “Campaign for NUS Democracy” in an attempt to derail the proposed constitutional amendments. This campaign included a conference attended by 50 student activists and a campaign website. The campaign is not completely united however; ENS noted that Student RESPECT activists at the campaign launch conference voted down nominations from Communist Students and Socialist Students to the steering committee of the ad-hoc coalition to stop the governance reforms. (Communist Students has also put a statement on their website on the “Fight for NUS democracy,” and Socialist Students has also released an official policy statement.)

P.S.: Have a look at this interesting tidbit from a Conservative student who attended the last NUS Conference. Amazingly enough, NUS National President Gemma Tumelty actually said (as part of her opening speech, arguing the need for the governance review) that “NUS has failed”!

* Canadian examples of these would include the Canadian Federation of Medical Students, the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students, and the National Educational Association of Disabled Students.

… and now the rest of the meeting

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At the same time that the Organizational and Services Development Committee was considering a variety of motions, the much larger Finance Committee was discussing audits and budgets. Calvin Tompkins from Tompkins, Wozny, Miller (TWM) (the auditor for CFS-BC, as well as the SFSS, the KSA, the DSU, and several other students’ unions) was present. He was apparently quite shaken up when he learned that the draft financial statements for the fiscal years ending 2003 and 2004 that TWM gave to CFS-BC were presented to the general membership and “approved” by the members at previous General Meetings as “audited financial statements.” (Furthermore, the 2004 draft financial statements were not even marked draft.) When Finance Committee representatives asked Tompkins why the statements were so very late, Tompkins said that this was because information on certain transactions was not provided to the auditors.

Although the Finance Committee voted unanimously to recommend the re-appointment of TWM, I strenuously argued against their re-appointment during closing plenary. I noted the following:

  • Auditors have a legal obligation (section 47 of the Society Acti) to complete audits of the organizations that they serve, an obligation that is not impacted by the failure of that organization’s management to provide certain financial information; however, TWM failed to do so, spectacularly, in the case of two different organizations: CFS-BC and the DSU. In the case of the DSU, audited financial statements were left uncompleted for three years, and even today the organization is not up to date on its audits.

  • Auditors have the right (section 52 of the Society Act) to access documents and to interview directors, officers, and staff of the societies that they audit in order to obtain the information necessary to conduct their audits. We had no evidence that TWM did so at CFS-BC or DSU.
  • Auditors also have the right (section 54 of the Society Act) to attend general meetings of the societies that they audit, and to speak at these general meetings. TWM had very good reason to speak to the members of CFS-BC and DSU and tell them why (and that!) they (TWM, CFS-BC, and DSU alike) were violating the Society Act – yet they failed to do so.
  • Lastly, I wasn’t proposing that CFS-BC should go without an auditor – under section 41 (3) of the Society Act, the refusal of the Semi-Annual General Meeting to re-appoint TWM as auditor would not have any actual effect on their continued status as the auditor. A negative vote would amount, essentially, to censure of the conduct of TWM.

In the end, TWM was re-appointed as the auditor, with the SFSS, the KSA, UVic Grads, and the CSU voting against, and requesting that their dissent be recorded in the minutes.

Now, I should make it clear that I am not faulting the competency of the TWM partners or staff to conduct audits. Rather, I question their independence from management and their willingness to act on behalf of the members that appointed them and use (when necessary) the legal tools that the Society Act gives them, for fear that they might not be re-appointed. TWM auditors, I am sure, are nice people, but I cannot possibly advise my employer to re-appoint them as auditors of the KSA.

In non-financial news:

The Campaigns and Government Relations Strategy of CFS-BC passed, which included a controversial component called “Access for Graduate Students.” The SFSS graduate representative and the UVic Grads objected to the campaign’s proposal that funds from a BC graduate student grant program be distributed on the basis of need, rather than on merit. (Their arguments are somewhat complex, and I am hopeful that one of them will spell out their arguments in greater detail.) In any event, “Access for Graduate Students” passed despite the fact that every graduate student in the room was opposed to it (the specific details of the component, not the general principle!).

CFS-BC Documents:

Yesterday’s Organizational and Services Development Ctte Mtg

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So yesterday I attended the Organizational and Services Development Committee (OSD), which is in charge of reviewing motions relating to the services and internal affairs of CFS-BC, as well as reviewing Bylaw, Standing Resolution, and Operations Policies…

  • A motion from the Selkirk College Students’ Union to fully subsidize the costs of one delegate to every provincial general meeting was recommended for adoption to plenary.
  • A motion from the Malaspina Students’ Union (MSU) to produce “a handbook on best practices in financial management … as a resource for member local boards of directors and staff” was recommended for adoption to plenary. I moved an amendment proposing that the handbook be produced by “a qualified and experienced third party,” citing CFS-BC’s lack of qualification in this regard, but OSD voted down my amendment, claiming that the handbook should be made by elected officials and staff of CFS-BC member local student associations who were knowledgable of the specific financial management needs of student associations.
  • Two motions from the Simon Fraser Student Society relating to transgendered, intersexed, and gender-variant individuals were recommended for adoption to plenary. One of these motions required gender-neutral washrooms near all CFS-BC meetings; the other motion directed that a set of practices be developed to allow transgendered, intersexed, or gender-variant individuals to be included within CFS-BC’s gender-alternating speaker’s list system used during meetings.
  • A motion from the University of Victoria Graduate Students’ Society (GSS) to amend Bylaw II to require that during referendum on federating (i.e. joining) CFS-BC the referendum ballot should contain “the per semester fee associated with membership” was recommended for defeat to plenary. SUVCC Executive Director Christa Peters argued that the Referendum Oversight Committee, consisting of two representatives each of the Federation and the students’ union, should have the discretion to decide whether or not to include the fee on the referendum ballot. Malaspina Students’ Union staffer Pat Barbosa went further and said that it would be “biased” to have a referendum ballot that included the costs of membership but not a summary of the many benefits associated with membership. CFS National Director of Organising Lucy Watson noted that in the case of the referendum wherein the GSS voted to join the Federation, the cost of membership was clearly printed on nearly every piece of propaganda distributed during the campaign. (The referendum ballot for the GSS referendum did not cite the per semester membership fee, which lead to a lawsuit over the validity of the referendum.)
  • Another motion from GSS to allow for online voting and/or mail in ballot voting during a defederation referendum was recommended for defeat to plenary. Pat Barbosa argued that online voting was prone to fraud by hackers. (I noted that the KSA had experienced election fraud using only paper ballots.) Another delegate noted that mail in ballots would be environmentally irresponsible as they would consume a large carbon footprint. (National bylaws allow for a mail in component during referenda.)
  • Yet another motion from GSS to eliminate the provision that allows plenary to impeach a local representative on the Executive Committee was recommended to be ruled out of order, as this would be in violation of Section 31 of the Society Act.
  • A motion from GSS adjusting the reimbursement for automobile travel on Federation business was recommended for adoption with an amendment.
  • A motion from the Camosun College Student Society to create a seat on the Executive Committee to represent international students was recommended for defeat to plenary. It was argued that international students come from many different backgrounds, and were not uniformly oppressed by society. UBCSUO General Manager Rob Nagai noted that the President of the Alma Mater Society of UBC, Jeff Friedrich, was an American; that he came from a privileged background; and that he came to UBC because he couldn’t get into any Ivy League institution, and knew that he could easily afford UBC tuition fees. Sufficiently scared at the prospect of the Executive Committee being overrun by elitest American international students, OSD decided against creating this position.
  • A motion from the Students’ Union of Vancouver Community College to ask the Executive Committee to investigate the possibility of adding a disabled student representative seat on the Executive was recommended for adoption to plenary.

… In which we attempt to stop the re-writing of history…

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…And so yesterday I attended the opening plenary meeting of the Semi-Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Federation of Students – British Columbia. Here is a precis of the more interesting things that happened.

After preliminary matters, we came to:

8. Preparation for Committees

All committees were struck (Campaigns; Finance; Organizational and Services Development; Policy Review and Development).

When the motion was moved to adopt the Finance Committee agenda, the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) noted that the Finance Committee agenda curiously did not include any information on audits. This was rather odd, given that the CFS-BC was, at that time, 2.5 years behind in its financial statements. The SFSS moved that the Finance Committee agenda be amended to include (1) Review of Audits, (2) Appointment of Auditor, and (3) that the Auditor be present at the Finance Committee meeting as a resource person. Amendment approved.

9. Consideration of Motions Served With Due Notice

A great deal of motions were moved, seconded, and referred to an appropriate plenary committee. The motions included matters relating to general meetings; research on student financial assistance, Campus 2020, private loans, and international students. The Malaspina Students’ Union submitted this gem: “Be it resolved that a handbook on best practices in financial management be produced as a resource for member local boards of directors and staff,” which was submitted to the Organizational and Services Development Committee.

The only motion that aroused controversy during this meeting was this resolution, submitted by the Graduate Students’ Society of the University of Victoria:

Whereas a CUP resolution was passed such that the Death Star fund not be otherwise appropriated; and

Whereas no other vessel or vehicle is sufficiently evil or potentially, advantageously destructive; and

Whereas construction has begun in a secret facility hidden in a galaxy far, far away; and

Whereas a construction job of that magnitude would require a helluva lot more manpower than the Imperial army had to offer – I’ll bet there are independent contractors working on that thing: plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers…!; therefore

Be it resolved that independent contractors hired by the CUP be offered benefit packages accordant with the hazardous working conditions posed; and

Be it further resolved that in the interest of an egalitarian destructive weapons base, funding be increased for the Death Star Gay Bar; and

Be it further resolved that in the case that the pesky Federation discovers the weakness of the yet incomplete Death Star, i.e. typos on Joey Coleman’s blog, that the independent contractors be evacuated promptly; and

Be it further resolved that minacious posturing by the Federation be tantamount to a declaration of boredom, and that, foreseeing spurious debate upon the cryptic nature of such ridiculous resolutions

Be it further resolved that we acknowledge on behalf of the CFS that a safely completed Death Star is disastrous, as Darth Vader would never vote NDP, and therefore must be barraged at all costs with Mark Hamill’s wooden acting and reactionary plenary oversight

This motion was fairly clear to the small group of us in the room who (1) had attended the May 2007 National General Meeting and witnessed the plenary notify the National Executive about the “attempts by the Canadian University Press to influence the decision-making of the [national plenary] Organizational and Services Development Committee” and (2) were actually familiar with CUP’s joke “Death Star” motion [which is hilarious in and of itself]…. It’s hard to tell what the rest of the plenary felt about this motion – and we will probably never know, since a motion was promptly moved to Object to the Consideration of this motion.

9. Presentation of the Report of the Executive Committee

Now this was interesting. The Report of the Executive Committee was presented, even though the Executive Committee itself never had a chance to review and approve the report…. Two particularly controversial portions of this report were aroused great controversy, under the most amusing heading “Membership Issues“: Douglas Students’ Union and the Simon Fraser Student Society. The Douglas Students’ Union section read as follows:


LOCAL 18 – DOUGLAS STUDENTS’ UNION
For almost two years the administration at Douglas College refused to remit local and
Federation membership fees collected for the member local union. The College’s
intial claim was that the member local union was not in compliance with the
College and Institute Act, the legislation in BC that obligates institutions to
collect and remit students’ unions’ and provincial and national students’
organisation’s membership fees to the respective organisations. Upon the member
local union’s demonstration of its compliance with the Act, the College created
a list of demands that it required be met before the member local union’s and
Federation’s fees would be remitted. The demands from the College far
outstripped the obligations of the member local union according to the Act and
sought to undermine the autonomy of the Union. The Union refused to meet the
College’s criteria and remained firm in its resolution that its compliance with
the Act obligated the College to remit the dues it was illegally holding.

In response to the College’s unwillingness to fulfill its obligation, the Union
initiated legal action to obtain its dues and ensure that the Federation’s dues
were remitted. The College launched a counter petition, requesting that the
Union be put into receivership with a receiver manager of the College’s
choosing. The College named as its desired receiver manager expensive firm
Deloitte and Touche, the Union, agreeing that the appointment of a receiver
manager would be beneficial, proposed Local 44-University of Victoria Students’
Society General Manager Marne Jensen.
Given that it had a vested interest in a responsible resolution to the dispute, the Federation sought and was afforded
intervener status on the case and expressed its agreement with the member local
union that Jensen be apointed receiver manager. In early January, the case was
heard before the BC Supreme Court; the judge’s ruling not only agreed with the
member local union and Federation’s request that Jensen be appointed as receiver
manager, but also vindicated their assertions that the Douglas College
administration had been illegally withholding both the member local union’s and
the Federation’s membership dues.
Since the ruling, Douglas College has
released the dues it was illegally holding to the member local unions and the
Federation. The Receiver Manager, working with the Students’ Union’s Board of
Directors, has enacted appropriate financial controls, and is working to ensure
the Board is able to stabilise its financial situation and complete its late
audits.
Elections for the Board of Directors were held in April and the new
Board took office May 1. Federation membersin BC have been supporting the newly
elected representatives so that they are able to address internal challenges
while offering useful servicces and effective representation for
members.

Representatives of the Douglas Students’ Union pointed out the following flaws in this section of the Executive Committee report:

  • The DSU has never, since the controversy began, become compliant with the Society Act’s requirements of annual audits. (For more information, please see the following extracts from court documents: Affidavit of Karen Maynes #1; Exhibit G (draft, unaudited financial statements for 2005); and Exhibit L (Don Crane’s demand letter that claims that the DSU is in compliance with the Act.)
  • The DSU Board of Directors never agreed that Marne Jensen should be appointed General Manager; the DSU’s lawyer, Don Crane, made this submission to the Court without their consent. [Interestingly enough, Mr. Crane's position happened to coincide with that of the Federation's position...]
  • they said that the Courts never “vindicated” the position of the Federation re: the alleged ‘illegality’ of Douglas College’s withholding of CFS fees; their only Order was to appoint Marne Jensen as receiver manager.
  • they disputed the assertion that “The Reciever Manager, working with the Students’ Union’s Board of Directors, has enacted appropriate financial controls, and is working to ensure the Board is able to stabilise its financial stituation and complete its late audits.”

The Kwantlen Student Association (KSA) then moved that that portion of the report be referred back to the Executive Committee. When the vote was called for ‘in favour,’ half a dozen students’ unions raised their voting cards, while the majority of them didn’t do so. When the vote was called for ‘against,’ a couple of voting-card-carryers half-raised their cards – I presume hoping that the other Fedhead unions would join them in shooting down this motion. This did not happen, however, and so rather than bravely raise their cards in the air, these two ‘half-against’ student unions simply put their cards down – meaning that the motion passed unanimously! My interpretation was that they were too embarassed to attempt to rewrite history without the support of all the other loyalist/Fedhead students’ unions in the Component…. (Interestingly enough, one of these voting-card-holders was Steve Beasley, Executive Director of the Malapsina Students’ Union….)

(I have uploaded onto my webpage hundreds of pages of court documents that I pulled from the Supreme Court of BC registry several months ago relating to the Douglas Students’ Union case. Read them, and then tell me whose story you believe!)

Immediately after this vote passed, a number of rather unhappy Fedhead delegates came to the microphone. One delegate insisted that this motion was out of order. Anita Zaenker, the Plenary Chair, disagreed.

A motion was then moved to approve the Executive Committee report, except for the Douglas Students’ Union portion.

Then came the Simon Fraser Student Society, who objected to this portion of the Executive Committee report:

LOCAL 23 – SIMON FRASER STUDENT SOCIETY
In March a letter from a member of the Local 23 Board of Directors was received by the
Vancouver office, stating that the Local had held a referendum to defederate.
The Federation clarified to the Local that no referendum had been held.

The SFSS moved that that portion also be referred back to the Executive Committee.
While this was being debated, the Douglas Students’ Union then moved that the ENTIRE report be referred back to the Executive Committee, citing yet additional flawed references in the Executive Committee report to the Douglas Students’ Union….

The motion to refer the entire Executive Committee report to the Executive failed, with UVic Grads, DSU, SFSS, and KSA voting in favour.

The amendment relating to the SFSS succeeded on a very tight vote. (A motion moved earlier that this vote be taken by roll call was defeated.)

Finally, the main motion passed. UVic Grads, DSU, SFSS, Capilano Students’ Union and KSA voted against, citing the continued inclusion of false statements in relation to the Douglas Students’ Union case in the report….

The entire meeting was rather emotional, even though we were not debating the expenditure of money or the launch of a campaign; all we were doing was arguing over a certain version of events. It was clear that CFS-BC (or rather, the at-large officers and their loyalists) wanted desperately to spin the situation as “Evil Douglas College versus Oppressed Douglas Students’ Union,” presumably so as to justify the hundreds of thousands of dollars that CFS-Services and CFS-BC lent to the DSU in 2005 and 2006 (without Board of Directors resolutions, might I add) and portray the Federation as “liberator” rather than “participant in cover-up” or “waster of money,” etc.

In any event, today and tomorrow we have committee meetings, speakers, caucuses, and workshops of various sorts. Sunday is the day for Closing Plenary, when motions that have been debated in committees get voted on.