Conservative activist Dean Tester's dream finally comes true. (1) Change of venue: Instead of blogging from his basement, he'll do it from the CFS general meeting. (2) Perks: He gets to protest anti-war speakers by wearing his Friday reds, while being mistaken for a McGill graduate student, while getting paid by McGill's Post-Graduate Students' Society. Life is good.
For this post we thought we would address one of the most blogged about events in Campus Conservative circles. As you may have heard, this week the Canadian Federation of Students convenes its second general meeting of 2009. This meeting will be an important one for CFS enemies and supporters alike. Much blogged about motions packages (“reform packages”) have been served and are on the plenary agenda. In total, almost 100 motions will be debated. We guess any of these motions could take hours to fully address, but even if only 15 minutes per motion are required, this will take 25 hours. Of course, with such talk of de-federation, many of the motions served are related to this aspect of the CFS’ bylaws. Motions are served from member student unions. In case you aren’t familiar with CFS terminology for the different “locals”, this link will help. We noticed that the majority of the motions came from three such locals, the Kwantlen Student Association (“Local 26”), Graduate Students’ Association of the University of Calgary (“Local 21”), and the Post-Graduate Students’ Society of McGill (“Local 79”). We briefly review some of their contributions to the hijack of this CFS general meeting.
1. The Kwantlen Student Association (KSA)
The KSA attempted to disaffiliate from the CFS in 2008, but students on that campus rejected that idea. The KSA representatives pledged to continue with their membership in good faith. Given that the KSA just won a referendum vote to increase its war chest to fight membership in the CFS by several tens of thousands of dollars, this pledge seems somewhat disingenuous.
Some motions moved by KSA:
Motion 18: would see the first steps of merging the CFS and Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (the right-of centre and much smaller counterpart to the CFS, which according to former Globe and Mail editor-in-chief, Edward Greenspon, was formed at the same time as the Canadian government was actively attacking CFS and building alternative networks to it in the mid 1990s.). This could help stabilize CASA after its loss of founding members at the University of British Columbia and could legitimize the organization, which formerly supported regressive loan schemes and still, to our knowledge, has nothing to say about rising average of Canadian tuition fees. Motion 18 looks like an innocent “can’t we all just get along” motion, but we think it will disproportionately help the smaller, right-wing CASA gain momentum and leech off the CFS. CCW to meeting participants: don’t do it.
Motion 19: Motivated by the claim that previous bylaw amendments caused the Canadian student movement to “weaken and splinter,” this motion would mandate work with legal counsel to “modernize” CFS’ bylaws. Following this, the updated bylaws, in their entirety, would be brought back for ratification. The cynics in us see this leading to the following: (1) cause CFS to waste all sorts of money, (2) cause their legal bills to grow so that muckrakers have more ammo against the CFS, (3) give anti-CFS types a chance to waste another entire meeting sparing over bylaw minutia. Motion 19, is a classic “reform motion” which we believe is at best useless, and at worst strongly detrimental to the capacity of the CFS to actually get anything done.
Motion 20: Calls for journalists to attend CFS general meetings. Looks like that’s already happening. Also, looks like some are unmoved by this gesture (could just be his way of lobbying the CFS for tuition policy he prefers).
Other motions include motion 21, which would institute perpetual referenda on every campus every year in order to maintain consumer price index adjustments to membership fees (more time/energy wasting) and motion 22 seeks to waive outstanding membership fees from the York Federation of Students. Strangely, among the motions from the YFS (“local 68”), there appears to be nothing indicating support for KSA’s motion 22, leading us to believe that this is more about financially stalling the CFS than it is about helping a fellow student union. Presumably this will be explained by YFS representatives at the general meeting.
2.The University of Calgary Graduate Students’ Association (UCGSA)
According to the UCGSA website, two delegates will attend the CFS general meeting. The first, David Coletto, is the former president and current executive member of Alberta Graduate Council, Albertan competitor to the CFS graduate student outfit, the National Graduate Caucus. The second attendee for the UCGSA is Matt Musson, an active campaigner for the de-federation campaign at U of C. We’re sure they’ll have no interest in being objective.
Coletto and Musson claim, along with the PGSS leadership, that the CFS’ Canada Education Action Plan, will result in “…recipients of non-salaried research assistant stipends to be required to pay as much as 30% tax on their funding.” This claim has been refuted.
Coletto and Musson will be arguing on behalf of the nearly 15 motions that were submitted by their student union. The majority of their motions relate to removing the speaking rights for CFS employees at meetings, dissolving various services, posting various internal documents online, making changes to membership referendum procedures (making it easier to run a successful withdrawal campaign, obviously), along with a host of other internal changes.
3. Post Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) of McGill
The motions that have caught the interest of many are those served by the PGSS, which apparently have not been approved by their council. Also unapproved was a decision to front the delegate fees for out of province, non-members (specifically anti-CFS partisans such as Dean Tester and Erin Hale), for which the PGSS executive have come under fire.
Some of the PGSS’ motions include:
Motion 49: An attempt to reduce the salaries of the National Executive to minimum wage. This smacks of a malicious attempt to ensure CFS elected leaders either live in poverty or are independently wealthy. Neither are very equitable. Both would be ideal to education elitists and Conservatives.
Motion 52: A call to open all meetings to “members of the press.” Does that mean everyone with a blog would be granted universal access? We’ll be there with our coffee mugs.
Motion 53: Put bylaws online in a less “cryptic location”. We found the link them under Research & Policy in less than 1 minute.
Motion 55: Requires a question period before and after every lunch. Hmmm, if Dean Tester…errr…the PGSS didn’t submit so many motions of questionable import, there would probably be time to have questions answered.
Motion 56: Calls for a publication of a “boycott list.”
Motion 57: Maintain a list of coalition partners on the website. We found this on the CFS site under “links.”
Motion 58: Would allow for the removal of “any of the at-large National Executive” for the “Federation’s” failure to adhere to policy, resolutions of bylaws. Someone missed a deadline, you’re all fired!
Motion 59: Takes issue with CFS representatives serving as meeting chairs for local student union council meetings and requires conflict of interest policy to prevent this. No word on how this is, in fact, a conflict of interest.
Motion 74: Calls for the CFS to implement voluntary fees. A sort of voluntary student union fees, ushered in by the Howard government in Australia decimated students’ ability to organize in that country (now mandatory fees are now being charged by the universities to provide services that were killed along with the students’ unions).
In addition, the PGSS has many more motions ranging from severing the CFS’ services from the CFS (motion 61) to changing referendum rules such that vote a local keg party can suffice for a referendum (motion 66) to demanding that the CFS and NDP stop their collusion (if this were true maybe the NDP would be doing better–motion 63) to the development of a complicated system of performance metrics for National Executive members (motion 71).
There are other motions, plenty in fact, but we don’t have time to get through everything here. Unfortunately, for the students at this general meeting, they probably won’t either, which means the important work of challenging the enemies of public education will have to be put on hold until this hijack is dealt with.
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5 responses so far ↓
campusconservativewatch // November 25, 2009 at 5:56 pm |
Ten Predictions for the CFS conference:
10. so-called reform package goes down in flames, usually with a supermajority voting against
9. CUP tweets will be voyeuristic, not journalistic
8. #cfs09 will be a useless collection of pro- and anti-propaganda
7. as a result of #10, rich kids from Ontario, who now run CFS-Q, will claim that there is an anti-Quebec bias in the CFS
6. the non-McGill students representing McGill graduate students will do more talking than all other McGill delegates combined
5. as a result of #6, current executive of McGill graduate students will be impeached
4. CUP stories will be about divisive matters not uniting ones
3. the most accurate account of the meeting will be written by a CFS blogger and will be ignored for that reason
2. so-called “reformers” won’t attend majority of sessions
1. in spite of #10, so-called “reformers” will actually win, since the goal was having a public temper tantrum, not reform.
Graeme // November 25, 2009 at 8:30 pm |
There’s only so much ignorance, intolerance, and arrogance I can stand from this blog, and I think I just lost it inside. I don’t know how you can have such a flat, black and white point of view of things but it’s disgusting. I could comment on a good few things, but I’m going to focus on your baseless accusations in the following paragraph:
“Motion 18: would see the first steps of merging the CFS and Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (the right-of centre and much smaller counterpart to the CFS, which was reported to be propped up by the Canadian government in the mid 1990s). This could help stabilize CASA after its loss of founding members at the University of British Columbia. Motion 18 looks like an innocent “can’t we all just get along” motion, but we think it will disproportionately help the smaller, right-wing CASA gain momentum and leech off the CFS. CCW to meeting participants: don’t do it.”
First and foremost, this motion isn’t about merging, it’s about working together. This is a sentiment I fortified myself at my first CASA conference in March 2009, where I drafted the motion that is cited in Motion 18. At my first CASA conference, I realized how much we have in common as far as common goals go: Grants NOT Loans, Copyright policy, Childcare, creating a Dedicated Education Transfer to the provinces, and the reallocation of ineffective tax credits into up-front grants, to name a few. Please, tell me, what exactly is right-wing about asking for up-front assistance instead of useless back-end tax credits?
Beyond that, what is reflected on CASA’s side in Motion 18 began well before UBC’s motion to leave in April 2010; a solid 7 months prior. This is no secret attempt to “leech” off of the CFS. The motion we passed unanimously in March was on a spirit of goodwill, to begin the reconciliation process between the two “feuding” organizations and perhaps, at some point, collaborate on the hill to achieve our common goals. And as far as disproportionate help goes, while CFS gains more attention in the public eye, CASA gains quite a bit of attention within committees and policy maker circles on the hill. Co-operation will help both CASA and CFS, believe it or not.
Finally, CASA is NOT RIGHT-OF-CENTRE! I would NOT support CASA if it were, that’s for sure.
And aside: CASA propped up in the mid 90’s? Why the hell would that happen? First I’ve ever heard of that. Last I checked, CASA was lucky to get off the ground with a small number of members at the start.
And who am I? A strong CFS supporter from Newfoundland, from the front lines of the Days of Actions in 2004 and 2007 to meeting with MPs on CFS issues and many of their provincial conferences. I went to my first CASA Conference in March 2009 as the secondary delegate for the Graduate Students Association of the University of Waterloo and fiercely defended the CFS, to the point that I convinced people of the merit of working together.
There’s a Facebook post I made on this fresh out of that conference. I’ve posted it at http://grambottle.blogspot.com/2009/06/this-is-note-i-posted-on-my-facebook.html so perhaps you can read it, maybe think on it, and [hopefully] begin to re-think your opinion of CASA, for it is misguided and misled. I’m fine with people taking issue over CASA not having provincial components, or that CASA doesn’t take stances on social issues like the CFS does (both valid viewpoints of what a national student organization should do), but I won’t ever stand for this baseless bashing and alleging that CASA is some form of right-wing student group. Sadly, I was once of the same opinion, but once I saw CASA for myself, I realized how wrong it is. I hope you can appreciate that viewpoint.
That’s a long-enough comment for now. Hopefully you may reconsider how you feel about CASA. It took me a while but CASA’s not all that bad – in fact, I like CASA, while remaining a supporter of the CFS.
. // November 25, 2009 at 10:09 pm |
Is there a link to prove CASA is now ‘bankrupt’ from one school leaving?
Links to the reports that CASA was ‘propped up’ by the government?
Kelsey // November 25, 2009 at 10:32 pm |
“to changing referendum rules such that vote a local keg party can suffice for a referendum (motion 66)”
You’re kidding me right? When you look at every referendum that has ever been held on continuing membership in the CFS, there are always massive problems. That happens very rarely at the local level when student unions administer their own elections–they generally hire independent and impartial electoral officers who tend to do a good job.
The current referendum process, particularly by requiring a Referendum Oversight Committee that lacks tie breaking mechanism, is so unbelievably flawed and broken that its caused numerous lawsuits wasting the money of both the CFS and member locals. Your utter dismissal of a change of membership referendum back to local administration is frightening and shows a serious unwillingness in this blog to EVER be critical of the CFS. This is not a left-right problem, it’s a basic issue of fairness and democratic legitimacy.
I also look forward to your thoughts on Plenary Motion 6 (instead of your complete radio silence on the motion). Is a strong and progressive student movement at its best when its essentially impossible to ever leave or question from the inside? Their proposed changes are so draconian to the point of being questionable under Canadian law.
Bullshit Tester (No relation to that dipshit Dean) // November 26, 2009 at 3:57 am |
Kelsey, you are kidding me right? That right-wing student “lobby” group, CASA, is the one that makes it harder to leave than join – not the CFS. Where is your snivelling post complaining about them, you hypocrite?
Instead of seeking a mandate from students, CASA simply requires a council vote – so like 13 friends (usually almost all white dudes in polo shirts) at a summer council meeting can join all their careerist friends at other Ivy-wannabe schools. But once you realize that the organization is just a shitty job camp for future Liberal staffers (with a few Conservatives like James Kusie thrown in) they make it harder for you to get out!
That’s right, you can’t leave right away, you convince two councils in two consecutive years to leave. So it is like a two year process. Hilarious!
That gives CASA an extra year to try to get their ken-doll buddies elected again so they can reverse the decision.
Too bad that didn’t work out so well for them the last two years at UBC – and believe me people, we are NOT a radical student union!