Tuesday, November 28, 2006

SFSS Legal Documents Posted

I have posted the legal documents relating to the court case over the disputed October 25, 2006 Special General Meeting on my Forum website. All in all, 19 major documents have been filed. These include:
  • The Petition to the Court, filed by the Petitioners (the G7), which intiates the proceedings and spells out their intial position.
  • Affidavits of various parties, which are used to affirm facts. These affidavits also contain a number of "exhibits," which are documents that will be used as evidence.
  • Outlines: one outline of the Petitioners, and two outlines of the Respondents (given that we have two different lawyers). These outlines lay out, in brief, the legal arguments that each side will be making in support of their position.

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Saturday, November 25, 2006

Kwantlen Student Association Post-Audit Memorandum Released

The Kwantlen Student Association has published its Post-Audit Memorandum [PDF] for 2005, following the recent victory of the "Concerned Students of Kwantlen" slate, displacing the "Reduce All Fees" (RAF Party) slate that had previously been in power for a year and a half. And what revealing things one can find in this document! Allow the following gems to pique your interests:
1. Disbursements should be authorized by appropriate personnel. There is no approval system in place for disbursements....
2. Cheques issued no longer require 2 signatures....
5. ... As at December 31, 2005, $285,000 in outstanding deposits had to be recorded in the current health and dental plan accounts.
6. ... The bank accounts were not reconciled correctly for most of the fiscal year....
9. At the time of the audit, we discovered that certain expenditures (some were large) that were unsupported (i.e., no cheque requisition, no supplier invoice)....
23. For the year ending December 31, 2005, the Association incurred a loss of approximately $352,000 after recognizing a gain of $49,000 on the sale of long term investments which had previously been written down. In addition, the Association's overall equity has been reduced by that amount to approximately $326,000 (down from $677,000)....
24. As at December 31, 2005, the Association has a working capital deficiency of $209,815....
28. Substantial severance payments (over $180,000) were made to employees in 2005....
In total, 53 complaints were recorded in the Post-Audit Memorandum. The KSA is currently conducting a Forensic Audit through PriceWaterhouseCoopers to determine exactly when happened to their money during the RAF Party era (now referred to within the organization as the "Dark Times").

Now, the KSA actually received a clean audit [PDF] for 2005, back in June 2006 when its financial statements were presented at the Annual General Meeting. This is most peculiar: the society received a MASSIVE number of complaints in its Post-Audit Memorandum, which was (until now!) a confidential documents, known only to the KSA management and executives, whereas their actual Auditor's Report - the only document presented to the membership - suggested that everything was rosy.
Even more interestingly, the auditors of the KSA are Tompkins Wozny Miller, the same firm that audits our good friends the Douglas Students' Union (DSU) and the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS)! And, as it turns out, there are actually quite a number of interesting connections between the KSA and the DSU/SFSS, besides a common auditor....

In an earlier post, I noted that a lawsuit between the KSA and a group of students (who have since won the recently-held KSA elections and are now in power) had been settled. The Petitioners in this lawsuit alleged that the KSA, under the rule of the RAF Party, had held a Special General Meeting that was corrupt and anti-democratic, specifically alleging that notice was not given for the general meeting, no opportunity was allowed to debate the motions under consideration, and the motions themselves were voted on in a manner designed to prevent the assembly from knowing what exactly they were voting for.... (Check out Steve Lee's website for the details!) In any event, here is a screenshot of a video clip of this Special General Meeting:



Wait a minute, who is that gentleman in the red shirt? Is that not our good friend Joey Hansen, Finance and Services Coordinator of the Douglas Students' Union?

And here is another interesting connection between the DSU and the KSA: they both have granted loans from the Health and Dental Plan funds to people! In the case of the DSU (at least as reported by Global TV), a loan of $20,000 was allegedly granted to Christa Peters, Mr. Hansen's partner (and staffer of the Students' Union of Vancouver Community College). In the KSA, however, it appears that loan of $200,000 was approved, out of Health and Dental Plan funds, to someone named Inderjit Johal. Here is the proof:



Now how about that connection to SFU? Well, the RAF Party has contended that the election that saw the Concerned Students of Kwantlen take power was conducted improperly, and they sought to have the election annulled (with the result that they would continue to stay in power until another election could be held). So they appealed to the KSA Ombudsperson, Paul Browning, who has apparently agreed with the RAF Party on appeal.

Now, Paul Browning is also an SFU student. Indeed, during the October 25, 2006 Special General Meeting at SFU, Mr. Browning was first on his feet during the debate on the motion to impeach President Shawn Hunsdale, declaring that Mr. Hunsdale was a "fine, upstanding individual."

In any event, the latest electoral conflict will be sorted out in court, as the former Council (dominated by the RAF Party) has filed a lawsuit naming the Concerned Students of Kwantlen as Respondents, asking the Courts to annul the election. And guess who is the lawyer for the RAF Party folks?

You guessed it! Donald G. Crane, of Rush Crane Guenther, is prosecuting this case, just as he is sueing me over the SFSS Special General Meeting.... Oh, what a small world we live in!

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Wednesday, November 22, 2006

SFSS Bank Crisis Resolved; Trial Dates Set

The freeze of the SFSS bank accounts has been resolved. Following a mediation session that was held on Monday, the impeached directors (the G7) and most of the remaining directors agreed on a compromise to restore the operations of the Student Society. My understanding is that the Supreme Court of British Columbia approved the following Court Order:

THE APPLICATION of the petitioners coming on for hearing at Vancouver on the 22nd day of November, 2006 and on hearing Donald G. Crane, counsel for the petitioners, and Susan Coristine, counsel for Janis Gunn, Heather Ball, Joel Blok, Melody Lee [sic], Ben Milne, Andrea Sandau and Ivy So, and BY CONSENT;

THIS COURT ORDERS that:
  1. The authorizing signing officers of the Simon Fraser Student Society shall be:
    - Nancy Woodcock
    - Lawrence Jones
    - John Laurin
    - Brenda Phillips
    - Glyn Lewis
    - Ivy So

  2. All cheques must be signed by two (2) of the above noted six (6) people.

  3. All cheque requisitions shall be signed by each of Andrea Sandau, Joel Blok, Glyn Lewis and Margo Dunnet.

  4. Stipends to the end of October of 2006 shall be processed. Stipends for the period commencing November 1, 2006 shall not be processed.

  5. Legal fees shall not be processed.

  6. The above terms are for the interim period pending a ruling of the Court on the matters raised in the Petition herein.
In addition, the Court has set the (final) Court Date for the trial on the legitimacy of the Special General Meeting for November 30 and December 1, in the Vancouver courthouse, starting at 9:45 a.m. on both days. I do not yet know the court room number.

.................
UPDATE (2006-11-23): I have made a couple of minor changes now that I have actually seen the text of the Consent Order.

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Saturday, November 18, 2006

Video Documentary of the Special General Meeting



Not complete, but it still gives you a good idea of the feel of the meeting.

Click here for a downloadable version of the documentary.

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McMaster Student Union Dismisses Student Newspaper Executive Editor

Joey Coleman reports that the Board of Directors of the McMaster Student Union (MSU) has laid off the Executive Editor of The Sil, the student newspaper of McMaster University. This layoff was apparently in violation of the Operating Policies of the MSU, which give the power of hiring and firing to the Board of Publications, an entity that includes representatives of the student newspaper as well as student politicians. The layoff was conducted by the four-member Board of Directors without consulting the Student Representative Assembly of the MSU, which is the primary governing body of the student union. The Editorial Board of the MSU released a statement asserting that their "autonomy has been jeopardized."

The Eyeopener, student newspaper at Ryerson, has an editorial on the subject.

Meanwhile, the MSU Board of Directors has released a statement claiming "that the decision to dismiss the Silhouette Executive Editor has nothing to do with the content of the Silhouette," and further stating that they would not provide a reason for the Executive Editor's dismissal as "employment procedures are dealt with in closed session" to protect the "confidentiality" of the process.... Hmmm, where have I heard that before....

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Special General Meeting Minutes Posted

Click here [PDF] to download the draft minutes of the October 25, 2006 Special General Meeting of the Simon Fraser Student Society. Many thanks to Amanda van Baarsen for acting as Secretary of the meeting!

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Global News Continuing Coverage of the Douglas Students' Union

Joey Coleman reports on the latest Global news coverage of the Douglas Students' Union.

A very interesting story, to say the least.

The report states that Philip Link, who apparently approved the $276,000 loan from CFS-Services to the Douglas Students' Union, simply "works" for CFS-Services. In fact, according to news reports on the Travel CUTS lawsuit settlement, Mr. Link is the Executive Director of CFS-Services. This is a very substantial responsibility.

Now, I had known from reading articles in The Peak that Mr. Link had a colourful past, but it had been my impression that his only formal altercation with the law came with his 1997 acquittal of assault charges against Lana Many-Grey-Horses (whose testimony regarding the above you can read in these Langara Students' Union old minutes). So the Global news report is a new revelation for me.

In any event, I am now seriously considering re-posting the Douglas Students' Union forensic audit on my website. The post-audit memorandum is disconcerting in and of itself, but this is nothing compared to the forensic audit. When I last posted this forensic audit, Joey Hansen's lawyer gave me a letter threatening to sue me unless I took it down. At the time, I assumed that he had to have some sort of solid legal ground. But now that mainstream media companies like Global TV are prepared to talk about the contents of this forensic audit, this seems more like "SLAPP-like" behaviour to me....

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Saturday, November 11, 2006

Lawsuit

I am being sued. The Petitioners are the Simon Fraser Student Society, Margo Dunnet, Erica Halpern, Shawn Hunsdale, Vanessa Kelly, Glyn Lewis, Wei Li, and Marion Pollock. The Respondents are myself, Jan Gunn, and Bryan Jones. Please see this Lawsuit page for more information. The lawsuit asks the Court to order that the October 25, 2006 Special General Meeting is null and void.

Now, the interesting thing about this lawsuit is that the Simon Fraser Student Society is listed as a Petitioner, even though the Society has made no motion authorizing legal action to be taken. Furthermore, the solicitor for the Society is listed as Rush Crane Guenther, even though the Board of Directors voted on Thursday, November 2 to remove Rush Crane Guenther as their legal counsel!

Also interesting is a letter that was sent to Forum [PDF] on Thursday, November 8 by Rush Crane Guenther. This letter informs Forum that "Counsel for the Petitioners and Respondents have agreed on a date for a court hearing, being November 22, 2006." This is false. First, the Ottho Law Group (which is representing me and Bryan Jones) has made no such agreement. Second, the Ottho Law Group is not (at present) representing Jan Gunn. Rush Crane Guenther never approached Jan to ask her who her lawyer was, nor did Jan file an Appearance with the Court to this effect.

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Sunday, November 05, 2006

I completely concur with Geof Glass' thoughts on the Special General Meeting. In particular, this quote:
But there is no technicality. I saw Wei Li, alone at the microphone. I saw Margo Dunnet in the same place. These people are in over their heads, I thought. They are in this place, surrounded by people who reject them without even knowing them, and they don’t know how they got here. I felt for these people, even as I voted to impeach. Now I think of their faces and think: they are so ordinary, and they are tyrants.
Hat-tip: Joey Coleman

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Saturday, November 04, 2006

  • After the protest/tea party, G7 members had staged a 24-hour "camp-out" in the Board of Directors office, ensuring that at least one member was present in the office at all times.

  • The G7 have written emails to the Departmental Student Unions, Graduate Caucuses, and clubs of the SFSS, claiming that the freeze of the SFSS bank account, and the subsequent inability of the SFSS to provide grant funding to these students groups, was "because of the actions of Students for a Democratic University." SDU responded with a statement.

  • The G7, through Don Crane (counsel to the SFSS [Simon Fraser Student Society]), presented an offer to the Ottho Law Group (counsel to SDU [Students for a Democratic University]), requesting that SDU accept an arrangement whereby SDU would accept that the G7 would stay on as directors, on a "without prejudice" basis (that is, without harming the legal case of SDU that the SGM [Special General Meeting] was valid), pending a decision by the courts. SDU rejected this, as (1) they were impeached because they had abused their powers as directors, and (2) we didn't believe that we had the mandate to speak on behalf of the remaining members of the Board - or the 1000+ students who participated in the SGM.

  • On Tuesday, SFU President Michael Stevenson released an official statement recognizing the results of the Special General Meeting, "pending a decision to the contrary by the Supreme Court of BC."

  • Also on Tuesday, University Relations Officer Andrea Sandau and Graduate Issues Officer Joel Blok wrote a letter to Don Crane, informing him that, as counsel to the SFSS, he was to no longer seek direction from any of the G7.

  • Employees of the SFSS received their paycheques on Thursday. Cash revenues from the Pub were deposited in a second (already existing) bank account, at a different financial institution. Cheques were then written from this financial institution to our employees; these cheques were signed by employee signing officers, not by the G7. (This reveals that the Highland Pub isn't doing so bad after all, financially speaking!)

  • Also on Thursday, the Board of Directors held a meeting. The Board voted to request that Vanessa Kelly, Glyn Lewis, and Wei Li agree, on a "without prejudice" basis, to remove their names from the list of signing officers.

  • On Friday, SFU Security changed the locks on the offices of the SFSS. Security will not give keys to the G7.

  • As of the writing of this blog entry, the Society's main bank account is still frozen.

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