The 51st Semi-Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Federation of Students(-Services) will now come to order...
I have scanned and uploaded [PDF] the Second Notice of the 51st Semi-Annual General Meeting of CFS(-Services), to be held May 24-27 at Carleton University, Ottawa, for your viewing and commenting pleasure.
One interesting motion on the agenda was a Bylaw amendment to provide that the CFS' auditors will be appointed at the Semi-Annual General Meetings (SAGM) only, rather than at both SAGM and Annual General Meetings (AGM) (which seems to be a quirk in the current bylaws...). (SAGMs take place in May of each year; AGMs take place in November.) This motion seems to contravene sections 130-132 of the Canada Corporations Act, which governs the CFS' operations, and specifies that auditors are to be appointed, and audited financial statements are to be presented at annual meetings, not semi-annual meetings. This motion should probably be amended to provide that financial statements will be presented at CFS AGMs, and not at SAGMs.
Not on the agenda are two motions submitted [PDF] by the KSA (my employer): one directing the CFS to post its Bylaws, Standing Resolutions, Policies, national executive reports, budget, and financial statements online, and another making CFS general meetings open to the media. (Our motions were not placed on the agenda because we submitted them late, which happened because we received insufficient notice of the meeting [for which I largely blame Canada Post and the Kwantlen administration]). However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Students' Society of McGill University has submitted two motions that closely parallel the motions that the KSA has submitted!
Also, the CFS has published its Bylaws and Policies on its website, after voting down just such a proposal just three years ago.
One interesting motion on the agenda was a Bylaw amendment to provide that the CFS' auditors will be appointed at the Semi-Annual General Meetings (SAGM) only, rather than at both SAGM and Annual General Meetings (AGM) (which seems to be a quirk in the current bylaws...). (SAGMs take place in May of each year; AGMs take place in November.) This motion seems to contravene sections 130-132 of the Canada Corporations Act, which governs the CFS' operations, and specifies that auditors are to be appointed, and audited financial statements are to be presented at annual meetings, not semi-annual meetings. This motion should probably be amended to provide that financial statements will be presented at CFS AGMs, and not at SAGMs.
Not on the agenda are two motions submitted [PDF] by the KSA (my employer): one directing the CFS to post its Bylaws, Standing Resolutions, Policies, national executive reports, budget, and financial statements online, and another making CFS general meetings open to the media. (Our motions were not placed on the agenda because we submitted them late, which happened because we received insufficient notice of the meeting [for which I largely blame Canada Post and the Kwantlen administration]). However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Students' Society of McGill University has submitted two motions that closely parallel the motions that the KSA has submitted!
Also, the CFS has published its Bylaws and Policies on its website, after voting down just such a proposal just three years ago.
Labels: cfs
22 Comments:
Kudos to the CFS for finally posting their bylaws online. Good decision. However, the posted version seems to be out of date - for example, at least 1 ammendment made at the summer 2006 national meeting isn't in there.
(contnued). It looks like the webpage with the bylaws isn't intended to be part of their site yet (the rest of the website doesn't link to this page). So hopefully they will update the bylaws before theyintegrate the page into their site (since the page claims that the bylaws available there are up-to-date)
So will Philip Link be at this meeting?
Maybe someone can tell him he needs to be better prepared when doing a television interview. Asking a reporter,"What is your problem?..." when he's the one who can't answer a question is a little crazy. It not only made him look bad, but hurt CFS-Services credibility.
And may I add what is someone with previous criminal history doing in a leadership position of a national student organization?
Check out the two CUTS line-items in the budget.
One is a revenue line - income from a "referral fee". Note that last year's actuals are down by roughly 25% from budget. Possibly this means lower than expected revenues at CUTS; it may also mean that the U of A crew (or whatever the new minority owners are calling themselves) took their share of the money here.
More interesting is the cost line - "investments in CUTS". In the budget, it is about $150K - in the actuals it is $650K - a change which effectively wiped out the substantial CFS surplus.
What's this about? Well, since the 1960s, Travel CUTS has paid its political benefactor (originally AOSC, later CFS) a 1% "referral fee". This was tax-free for a long time but I think I have seen somewhere that a couple of decades ago Revenue Canada sent CFS a letter saying we're going to tax you on this unless you reinvest it all in CUTS (this had to do with rules on share-capital companies owned by non-profits and other stuff I don't pretend to understand).
CFS followed this procedure for a long time; it would receive its fee and then give it back to CUTS - basically a form of re-capitalization. However, when CFS started running into financial problems in the mid-90s, they started welching on the deal - taking out (say) $650K and putting back (say) $150K and isssuing an IOU for the rest. On the balance sheet, this was fine and dandy - CUTS had $650K in "assets" to offset to $650K it sent out; the only problem is that of course CFS had no intention of honouring the IOU and CUTS would never seek redress because it was owned by the people who owed the debt! CFS, meanwhile, makes out with $500K in tax-free money in that year.
Legal? Maybe, but my understanding is that if the loan is never repaid, CFS would be close to crosing a nasty line on tax evasion.
Financially prudent? CFS makes out like a bandit, of course, but from the CUTS perspective I seem to recall seeing documents which indicated the need to hide this kind of thing from IATA because CUTS risked being refused certain certifications because of under-capitalization.
Interesting, though, that the practice of "borrowing" money from CUTS stops the year CUTS actually gets some independent oversight from the U of A folks. I'm betting that those guys used the muscle they acquired through their settlement to stop CFS doing this.
But of course, this still leaves open the question of how much there is outstanding in IOUs between CFS and CUTS. They've been doing this "borrowing" for 10-15 years; in the early years the IOUs were for under $200K - lately apparently they rose to 500K or so (or at least this is how I read the budget Titus provided). Total outstanding? At a guess, close to $3 million. But someone should ask this question at the AGM.
It would be nice to think that the U of A folks would ask for this money back on CUTS' behalf - but I doubt if they can. Triggering the debt might force CFS into bankruptcy; and if CFS went bankrupt, Travel CUTS would lose the paper "assets" represented by those IOUs. I don;t know the first thing about CUTS finances and IATA licensing requirements, but I can't imagine that a regulator would look kindly on a company saying "oh yeah, that $3 mil in assets? They're gone". It might make regulators think hard about the solvency of a company that issues tens of thousands of dollars of tickets each day. And since the U of A folks fought for ten years to get their share of the CUTS pie, I doubt they'd want to put the company in that kind of danger. So I think maybe the tacit deal is: as long as CFS starts playing by the rules, we'll ignore what happened before.
The question is: would Canada Revenue be as charitable if they knew about this arrangement?
On another note: this is just a budget. More interesting would be a balance sheet clearly listing debts and assets, especially if one could compare the listings across CFS holdings such as CUTS and the Health Network. Where, for instance, would a loan to DSU show up? CFS? The health network?
Many thanks, Titus, for posting this.
Sorry - mistake. Last year's budget didn;t envisage a 500K "loan" from CUTS - the gap was actually $670K. This suggests the outstanding amount of 12 years might actually be higher than $3 million.
And a word of advice to the anti-Phil Link crowd: yes, he's objectionable in the extreme, and yes, he's an easy target because of the "what's your problem" line. But don't personalize things. Harping on a minor conviction from 15 or 20 years ago makes you look petty. Link is not the problem at CFS, he's a *symptom* of the problem; namely, that a once-great orgnization that did a reasonable job of representing a broad spectrum of student opinion has been hi-jacked by a very small group of perma-students and staff and become a law unto itself.
re: "small group of perma-students".
This should read "small group of university drop-outs." I doubt there is more than a handful of diploma and degree holders amongst the current national and provincial staffs.
A lot of them dropped their academic programs once their hands were firmly in the cookie jar (i.e., admitted into Links inner circle).
IO personally don't think it matters whether you have the statements at the SGM or the AGM, but I think they should be presented within 6 months of the fiscal year end. That is the rule in BC and i think this is good.
Presenting the statements of CFS National at the SGM seems to mean presenting the financial statements 11 months after the fiscal year end. That seems unreasonable.
More importantly, the requirement under the Corporations Act for presentation of financial statements to the members is that it is within six months of the end of the fiscal year. This amendment would violate that law, quoted below
Corporations Act Section 118
Information for annual meeting
118. (1) The directors shall place before each annual meeting of shareholders
(a) a comparative financial statement relating separately to
(i) the period that began on the date of incorporation and ended not more than six months before the annual meeting, or, if the company has completed a financial year, the period that began immediately after the end of the last completed financial year and ended not more than six months before the annual meeting, as the case may be, and
(ii) the period covered by the financial year next preceding the latest completed financial year, if any,
which comparative financial statement shall be made up of
(iii) an income statement for each a period,
(iv) a statement of surplus for each period,
(v) a statement of source and application of funds for each period, and
(vi) a balance sheet as at the end of each period;
(b) the report of the auditor to the shareholders; and
(c) such further information respecting the financial position of the company as the charter or by-laws of the company require.
For members to have reasonable oversight of the finances, they need to look at the statements soon after the end of the fiscal year. This stuff in the motion about taking too long to get the information is bogus. The statements show the financial situation at the fiscal year end. if there are projected revenues, they can simply project the revenues based on the reasonable information available at the fiscal year end!!!
The way that I read it is that the resolution is not about presenting finances or approving finances. It's about appointing an auditor - if you only get audited once a year, why would you need to appoint an auditor twice a year? This change makes total sense.
The motion does move the auditors appointment, but it also moves the presentation of the auditors statements to the SGM, which is not in accordance with section 118.a.i of the Canada Corporations Act.
According to the Budget page, actuals for 2005/2006 for legal fees was around $369,000...just a mere 10% of total revenues...guess some legal firm is getting rich...
And just $130,000 for National Executive salaries???...how many national executives are there?...the CFS website lists almost 18 of them...what, are they each making less than $10,000 a year?...maybe they should look into becoming lawyers, that's where the money is...
On a bit of a different note... these news articles may interest people:
http://steveleenow.livejournal.com/62799.html
And specifically:
http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/5875/3/two++charged+in++vanderhoof++incident
Well just remember 2005/2006 was the year the TravelCUTS lawsuit was settled. You can complain that the organization is litigious in that they send off a fair bit of legal letters, but it's not like they had the option to NOT defend against the claim. Ultimately it was settled out of court which probably saved the organization a lot more money.
re: 130,000 for Nat. Exec.
I believe that only three positions are paid. Chair, Deputy and Treasurer. The rest just have expenses covered for meetings.
From Richmond Review May 18, 2007
Former Kwantlen student president charged in Vanderhoof drug crash
By Kevin Diakiw
May 18 2007
The former head of Kwantlen's student association is one of the men facing drug charges following last weekend's high-profile crash of a Ford Escape into a river in Vanderhoof, which left a Richmond man missing and another local arrested.
Surrey's Aaron Singh Takhar, 22, was allegedly driving a Mercedes-Benz that accompanied the Ford, which was found carrying 170 marijuana plants after it crashed in the Nechako River.
One occupant of the Ford, Richmond's Pritpal Singh Virk, 18, was treated for hypothermia and arrested, and another remains missing after the rented Ford plunged into the river, 50 miles west of Prince George.
Still missing is Richmond's Daljit Sandhu, 19, who was the alleged driver of the Ford, which along with a Mercedes-Benz, was pulled over during a routine road check around 3:30 a.m. Saturday in downtown Vanderhoof.
Despite an extensive search for Sandhu, which commenced within 20 minutes of the crash, he has not been found. Sandhu is five feet seven inches tall, and weighs about 185 pounds and was last seen wearing dark clothing.
RCMP divers deemed the river too dangerous to search.
Takhar, 22, was charged with production of a controlled substance, possession for the purpose of trafficking and trafficking a controlled substance. He remains in custody pending a Thursday bail hearing.
In addition, Virk faces charges of obstruction of justice, as well as marijuana production, possession and trafficking. Virk, who was rescued from the river, also remains in custody after being uncooperative with investigators.
Takhar made headlines last year when he became embroiled in legal battle over the results of Kwantlen University Students Association elections.
He was chair of the association in 2005, and according to court documents, served as "executive adviser" to Kwantlen Students Association last year.
He hasn't had political affiliations with Kwantlen since that time.
A person answering the phone at Takhar's Newton home said he hasn't seen him in about a week.
"No, we haven't heard from him," said the man who said he's a friend of Takhar.
Meanwhile, Vanderhoof Mounties are asking for the public's assistance in locating Sandhu.
Anyone with information about his whereabouts are asked to call CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
How awful, I hope they find this man.
Hallelujah! So there is a God!
What I find interesting is that the CFS finally chose to publish their bylaws, et cetera, only after a firestorm of controversy has engulfed several universities and colleges whose student society officers have been implicated in malfeasance or other dodgy actions, and have been shown to have strong connections to the CFS.
The growing story regarding the way CFS seems to act without a clear sense of accountability to anyone has probably woken up SOMEONE over at CFS and made them realize that unless they get out in front of this problem ,they'll get steamrollered by a right-wing government eager to squash an icon of the student movement, which has that annoying tendency to actually (heavens!) demand lower tuition
OMG! I just read of a FANTASTIC FACEBOOK CONSPIRACY to rope the University of Alberta into the CFS
http://utoronto.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2746135095
I demand a full report from the mainstream student blogosphere, or the ones who still haven't sold out.
Does anyone know if this is Steve Beasley from Malaspina who is now on the exec of WEstern Graduate Students board?
http://www.uwo.ca/sogs/About/executive.html
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