Getting good at predicting CFS litigation
You think for $350,000 dollars, their legal actions should be less predictable
I wrote the other day that the Canadian Federation of Students* (or Canadian Federation of Students – British Columbia or Canadian Federation of Students – Services) likes to play a game of semantics.
My exact words were:
* (CFS legal threats usually revolve around claiming that the three are completely separate and that one of the other two did it. It is like brat siblings. You ask them who did it and they all point to each other with no one taking responsibility.)
As Colbert would say, “I called it!”
Today, the Canadian Federation of Students National Office in Ottawa (I apologize for saying your name in vain — please don’t sue me) released the hounds lawyers on another group of students.
The CFS-National office is demanding a public apology from students at Kwantlen for misrepresenting the national office by distributing a press release that states that the CFS authored the plan. Basically, the national office is angry that the Kwantlen Students Association is calling the leaked “internal to CFS-BC and CFS staff” referendum plan a CFS document instead of a CFS-BC document.
My first thought on this was that it is another frivolous lawsuit by the Canadian Federation of Students based on semantics. After all, the CFS spent over $350,000 on legal fees in 2005-2006 (the year of the infamous and costly Travel Cuts lawsuit). Even if that year was an exception, the organization usually budgets $75,000 in legal fees per year (context: Canadian University Press budgets $5,000 per year). They’ve got to give those lawyers something to do.
Then I thought about it and I don’t blame them for wanting to have nothing to do with the BC office. I wouldn’t want anything to do with them either.
I wonder what a judge’s opinion would be on this. Has the CFS, CFS-services or any of the provincial level CFS taken a person to court and won on this argument?
I thought the students were CFS!? Maybe the BC chapter will have to change thier campaign to “I AM CFS-BC!”
Yeah, they control provincial chapters because, hey, CFS and its chapters are one big organization. But when they get caught the provincial chapters are separate legal entities and thus completely out of harm’s way.
This is a legal contraption aiming to be able to get away with near-criminal activities without ever being held accountable for it.
This is an organization sucking more than millions of dollars – every year! – out of students for one rally a year, a couple of t-shirts and useless signs.
This, in a word, is a con.
There is no mechanism for the provincial chapters to be controlled. If they do something that the national office or that anyone outside that province doesn’t like, there is no way people outside that province can force them to change their ways.
And Alex, it is false to say that: “This is a legal contraption aiming to be able to get away with near-criminal activities without ever being held accountable for it.”
If any provincial chapter did something illegal, it would be responsible and held accountable, as it should. What maybe you mean is that in that case the national CFS would not be responsible, but that only makes sense, why would you want to be punishing hundreds of thousands of students outside the province where the incident occured?
As I said in another thread : Philippe is a man on a mission.
Obviously no one would ever want to punish hundreds of thousands of innocent students who just want to pay their 10$ to the CFS and be the CFS, what kind of monsters do you think roam around Canada?
Lucky we have the CFS so save our souls from evil people like Alex, who seems to argue that the corporate veil should be pierced to bring the real culprits to justice. Imagine that…
Damon:
Well, do you want to punish the individuals who are the culprits or just make defamatory blanket statements on a whole organization to which so many students contribute, a crushing majority of whom are acting in a lawful manner?
I’m sorry to break your bubble, but I’m not any spokesperson for the CFS. Actually if you knew any little bit about the recent CFS and CFS-Ontario meetings I’m not so popular there and more than often on the losing side of any controversial vote.
So if I must be a paid spokesperson or “on a mission” to write 10 comments about this subject, what would you say about Joey Coleman who wrote over 1000 blog entries about it? Wait, he’s on your side, so that’s not the same thing?
There are maybe two people in Canada who are not yet bullied into silence by the CFS, so I tend to have more sympathy for them, yes. Not that that means that they’re not on a mission, it just means it’s a mission that doesn’t turn my stomach, that’s all.
You haven’t refuted the claim that the CFS rules are made to avoid responsibility just by saying that you think it’s not true. The evidence is mounting : one of the wonderful BC people that made headlines for sketchy, sketchy behavior got a nice job in Quebec instead of having their political careers destroyed for the behavior.
Oh, and that guy who has been accused of putting a down-payment of his house with student money? He was still a non-elected staffer (i.e. paid by students), and was merrily representing his university at a CFS conference last year…alone (the delegation was this guy).
Keep suing the right people and soon there won’t be an honest student left in the system. Which would sort of be a bummer, right?
Right?
“Oh, and that guy who has been accused of putting a down-payment of his house with student money? He was still a non-elected staffer (i.e. paid by students), and was merrily representing his university at a CFS conference last year…alone (the delegation was this guy).”
That is completely false. Where did you get your information from?
Again I don’t know the BC situation, but I’m sure Titus does. I just made two basic points which were not refuted.
1) There is no mechanism for the national CFS or for any local outside BC to control, or impose any decision, on CFS-BC. Same thing for any province.
2) There are “honest people left in the system”, as Damon says it, and any blanket accusation will hurt these people more than the wrongdoing ones.
why is the cfs-bc staff person who sent out this document making speculations about new hirings at locals and other cfs components? i guess we can wait and see who on that list gets hired at which local/cfs chapter, or if they now move the names around as to not appear that they control the hirings.
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