Where, oh where have all the financial statements gone?

• At the CFS-BC Executive Committee meeting held last weekend, members were informed that the audited financial statements of the organization for 2005 and 2006 are still not available for approval. (At the February 2007 meeting, we had been informed that the 2005 statements were almost completed, and copies would be sent to all member student associations within three weeks.) Scott Payne, BC Chairperson, said that the auditor, Charlie Miller of Tompkins, Wozny, Miller, was not prioritising the CFS-BC audit as he was devoting the majority of his time to establishing his own firm.
  
  
• At the same meeting, members were informed that the audited financial statements of the Douglas Students' Union for 2005 and 2006 are also not completed, despite the Supreme Court appointment of Marne Jensen (University of Victoria Students' Society [UVSS] General Manager) as Receiver-Manager. I have received no explanation for why these statements are not complete. The Douglas Students' Union is also audited by Tompkins, Wozny, Miller.
  
  In her Affidavit sworn October 25, 2006, Marne Jensen said: "I expect to be in a position to forward the remaining financial documents to Calvin Tompkins so that the audit for the fiscal year 2005 can be completed within the next 6 - 8 weeks, at which time the society will be in compliance with the College and Institute Act" (para. 12). Similarly, in his Affidavit sworn October 31, 2006, Calvin Tompkins said: "In order to complete the 2005 financial statements we still require the society's books to be written up and reconciled for at least the first 6 months of the 2006 fiscal year, and a list of other required documentation has been provided to the DSU. As soon as we have that information we expect to be able to complete the 2005 financial statements within 2 - 3 weeks."
  
  
• As the Douglas Students' Union's contact page indicates, Ms. Jensen as hired Ben Johnson as her assistant. Mr. Johnson was the Chief Electoral Officer of the UVSS in 2006. In addition, I have been informed that at least two individuals associated with the UVSS have been appointed to substitute for Mr. Johnson on days when he was not available: Naomi Devine and Penny Beames. (My sources tell me that Ms. Devine and Ms. Beames have only worked a couple of days each at the DSU.)
  
  Naomi Devine, a director of the UVic Sustainability Project, was an unsuccessful candidate for UVSS Director in the 2006 election that Mr. Johnson oversaw (and a successful candidate for Student Senator).
  
  Penny Beames was the (ultimately) candidate for Chairperson of the UVSS in the 2006 election. Thus, it would appear that she and Ms. Jensen are in the peculiar position of being each other's supervisors - albeit at two different students' unions, on different sides of the Georgia Straight. (Ms. Beames' term as Chairperson ends very shortly.)
  
  
• My sources have also told me that the Malaspina Students' Union has loaned $20,000 to the Douglas Students' Union, without signed documentation. (The Malaspina Students' Union won the competition to host the 2007 conference of the Federation of Canadian Student Leaders. However, their General Manager was unable to give me any meaningful information concerning the details of this conference.)
  

Reading material!

This weekend, I will be attending a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Canadian Federation of Students - British Columbia Component, at the University of Victoria. To prepare for this meeting, I assembled the minutes of previous Executive Committee meetings that were on file at the Kwantlen Student Association. After doing so, I thought that a good close to the day would involve scanning said documents and posting them online! They can be viewed here:

http://www.studentunion.ca/cfs/bc/exec/index.html

In other news....

Alex Usher comments here on the unforseen negative effects of the decision of the government of Prince Edward Island to reduce tuition fees by 10% [PDF]. (The government also committed to maintaining tuition fees to the relate of inflation for the next four years.) Usher suggests that because the provincial loan forgiveness program would continue to forgive students loans higher than $6000, students receiving such loan forgiveness would not see any benefit from a fee reduction.

The problem - as I see it - is this: if what is happening to "Jill" in Usher's story is happening to lots of people in Prince Edward Island, then the net effect is that the provincial government will be spending less money on its student aid program, since so many students would be qualifying for less financial aid. Now, I can only presume that the officials in the Provincial Treasury and the Department of Education have anticipated this effect. They have two choices:

1. Maintain the threshold for loan forgiveness at its current level, thus disbursing less financial aid to students, thus reducing the budget of the PEI loan-forgiveness program (perhaps to fund the tuition cut?), OR
2. Decrease the threshold for loan forgiveness, but maintaining the loan-forgiveness budget at its current level. In this case, the tuition cut would have to be funded by some other souce (tax hike, cut to some other government service, university capital freeze, etc.).
   

If government opts for option 1, then Usher's analysis is perfect: government really is robbing "Jill" to buy votes from "Jack" and his parents. But if government opts for option 2, then I don't see Usher's analysis of the perverse effects of a tuition cut working out quite as he suggests....

I agree with Aaron Takhar!

On banning slates, that is.

In his March 26 letter to the editor, SFU student (and former Kwantlen Student Association executive) Aaron Takhar argued against the recent decision of the SFSS Board of Directors to ban slates from its annual general elections. He claimed that the incumbent Board of Directors "have just been given — by themselves via a vote on the resolution — an even greater advantage over those new students who (almost) cared enough to consider running in the election." "You can’t ban politics," he continues, "you can only restrict it from the less fortunate; in this case it is new students that sought to run but eventually decided against it" — such as, say, himself.

Now, I'm not entirely convinced of Mr. Takhar's argument. Prior to the Alma Mater Society's ban on slates, the "Students for Students" slate won election after election through the inculcation of its brand name, even though (in general) only one of it's incumbent executives was running for re-election. Perhaps the 2007 election at SFU is different due to the large number of incumbents running for re-election.

However, in my opinion, there are at least three good reasons to oppose the banning of slates:

1. As a pure matter of principle, banning slates is anti-democratic and contrary to freedom of speech and freedom of association. Everyone should have the right to join together with like-minded fellow students and seek to influence the direction of their students' union, both during elections and outside of them.
   
   
2. Many students' unions have a very large number of different 'categories' of positions for which one can run in an election. Many large students' unions have five or so full-time executive positions, plus a large number of unpaid Council positions; many smaller students' unions have over a dozen separate executive positions. Without a degree of coordination amongst potential candidates for office, it is likely that many positions would lie vacant or be won by acclamation. [Of course, adjusting the structure of a students' union's Council/Board could eliminate this issue.]
   
   
3. Banning slates simply obscures what will likely happen anyways, behind the scenes. In particular, the 2007 election at SFU seemed to produce two 'non-slates': (1) the incumbent SFSS directors and their allies, and (2) a group of candidates from the SFU NDP club.

Direct democracy at UVic

The University of Victoria Students' Society held a most eventful Special General Meeting on March 30, 2007.

First, the SGM passed a motion establishing an independent legal investigation into the 2006 general election by a named lawyer - Bruce Hallsor - without specifying a spending cap on this investigation. The 2006 election was marred by controversy, involving incumbent Chairperson Penny Beames suing the UVSS over the issue of whether or not opponent Mike Waters, who received slightly more votes than she did, should be disqualified for alleged campaign rule violations. As a result of this motion's passage, only another general meeting can alter Mr. Hallsor's authority to investigate the election.

Bruce Hallsor is involved with Fair Vote Canada, and he is also a Conservative Party activist, and a former candidate for the Canadian Alliance. He was recommended by Erica Virtue, the incoming UVSS Director of Services and the sole winning executive candidate from the "Vote A.C.T. Now" slate. Virtue may have to mend some fences this year; Erin Sikora, a former director of the UVSS, has alleged that she made some unconciliatory comments regarding her competitors at the close of her election campaign. (Virtue is also part of the "UVic Young Republicans" and "A referendum to have the UVSS leave the CFS" Facebook groups.)

The second interesting motion that was introduced was a motion giving $20,000 a year to various student engineering societies - which likely would have passed, since engineering students dominated the meeting room - except that opponents of the motion staged a walk-out, forcing the meeting to lose quorum. This exact strategy was used at the SFSS Annual General Meeting in 2003, and a modification of that strategy was used to derail an impeachment effort at the Douglas Students' Union just a few months ago. (Even if the SGM remained quorate, however, it is doubtful that the engineers would have been able to get their UVSS gravy train; under Robert's Rules of Order, no business can be legitimately entertained at a special general meeting unless previous notice of motion is given.)

General meetings of students' unions are required by provincial legislation in British Columbia, but the phenomenon is not universal. To my knowledge, Alberta and Ontario students' unions do not have general meetings. In contrast many have linked the success of the Quebec student movement to their reliance on direct democracy in the form of student general meetings.

[EDITED the third paragraph 2007-04-21.]