CFS document sent to wrong people
List of 250+ potential CFS campaign staff revealed
The blogosphere was very active last night as the Canadian Federation of Students waits to find out who will post internal CFS information that reveals their multi-tens of thousands of dollars referendum campaign plans.
The internal document, never intended to be seen by non-loyalist members of the CFS was mistakenly emailed to the CFS-BC executive list serv by a CFS-BC staffer. (Yet another major mistake by the CFS-BC office)
The documents appears to show the CFS actively planning to recruit CFS loyalists to play a role in the referendums. (Note: I changed this paragraph because, in an earlier version of this post, I said that it looked like the CFS was “planning to recruit CFS loyalists to count ballots in the referendums.” The CFS document talked about staffing in a number of areas in connection with the referendums, such as poll clerks. But though poll clerks play an important role in referenda, they don’t count the votes).More interestingly, the document ranks various supposed Federation loyalists with various letter grades. (I have been contacted overnight by a few people saying that some of the names are not Federation “drones” and are not happy being on the list)
All in all, a very interesting document.
I spent the night trying, much like many student newspapers, to reach various leaders of the Federation without success.
The initial comments coming from people that are, at an official level, not spokespeople for the Federation is the same across the country – the main line is that CFS-BC is a completely separate entity, the documents are CFS-BC, and the National had never seen them. (Funny how coast to coast everyone says the same line without any National influence)
I’m most familiar with the CFS-Ontario structure but I understand the BC component is similar. So as a member of some CFS local in Ontario, I can observe the following decision-making stucture:
LOCAL
Individual students elect their local executive and council
ONTARIO
Local executive and/or council chooses delegates for CFS-O general meetings
-> General meeting delegates give directives to CFS-O executive and elects the at-large executive members, including one who also sits on the CFS (national) executive
and
Local executive and/or council appoints a representative on the CFS-O executive
NATIONAL
Local executive and/or council chooses delegates for CFS general meetings
-> General meeting delegates can give directives to the national executive
and
CFS-O executive can give directives to the Ontario representative on the CFS executive
—————
Essentially, that means:
- The local student union executives can direct the CFS-Ontario executive
- The local student union executives as well as the CFS-Ontario executive can direct the National Executive.
but that only works one way, so:
- The national executive cannot direct the provincial executive or the local executives.
- The provincial executive cannot direct the local executives.
- The local student unions outside Ontario cannot direct the CFS-Ontario executive.
It seems then obvious to me that as the power to direct only goes one way, the responsibility for people’s actions only goes up the same way (i.e. if I have no control on what people in Manitoba are doing I have no responsibility for it). In fact, if the national or provincial executive would have control on what people are doing locally, or if the national executive would have control over the provincial components, you could rightly criticize the CFS for being a centralized totalitarian organization.
Philippe,
On paper that is how the so-called “student movement” is supposed to work.
If there were local autonomy, you would not see plans to fly in hundreds of people and to bring non-students to campaign on a campus where they do not belong.
(No one seems to like to talk about the cost – monetary and environmental – of flying all these people across the country to overwhelm local students struggling for independence)
The reality in the real world is different that the theory written on a piece of paper somewhere.
I think what I have said is exact as well as my personal experience of the CFS is based, are of course this experience is limited. For example, I have never been on the national executive. Maybe you have more insider experience within CFS and so I’d respect your greater insight.
But I think we are mainly talking about two different things.
All that I’m saying is that the National Executive has no formal authority over a Provincial Executive, or over local executives. By that I mean, for example, that if I decide on my campus to run a campaign to for a inflation-capped tuition increase, and the national and provincial CFS don’t like it, they cannot do anything about it. But on the other side, if I run a campaign that the members of my local student union don’t like, they have all sorts of recourses (council vote, general meeting, impeachment, or just electing someone else next time).
The essence of what you’re saying, if I understand well, is that the defederation process that is outlined by the CFS bylaws (which are, implicitly, accepted by a local student union when it votes to federate) are unfair. That for me is an issue independent of the point I raised above. This has nothing to do with the fact that the national execs “direct” provincial or local execs, but all to do with the fact that a majority of CFS local execs still support these bylaws.
In fact, with the vote to remove prospective membership of SSMU in November, we saw very well that a majority of CFS locals could easily overturn a decision of the national exec. If you imagine all of this as a very centralized structure, you will ultimately fail to understand the CFS and fail to change anything about it.