CFS goes to Supreme Court to postpone membership referendum
Students at Kwantlen, SFU, and UVic are scheduled to vote this month on membership in the national student lobby group
The Canadian Federation of Students filed a petition in the BC Supreme Court last week for an injunction that would postpone a membership referendum at Kwantlen University College.
The vote on whether to remain a member of Canada’s largest student lobby group is currently scheduled to begin March 18. But if the CFS’ petition is successful, the vote will be rescheduled until the fall.
The CFS is dealing with simultaneous membership referendums at Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria (graduate students). Cape Breton University’s students’ union has also posted notice of referendum but it is unclear whether that vote will follow the CFS’ bylaws.
The CFS court petition claims that the Kwantlen Students’ Association, which is opposed to maintaining membership in the CFS, has broken a number of CFS referendum bylaws. It argues that the committee in charge of overseeing the referendum (that includes reps from both the KSA and CFS) has made little progress on key issues, including the referendum question, voting procedures, and alleged violations of bylaws. It also claims that the KSA has been campaigning since September, long before the scheduled campaign period.
Titus Gregory, a policy analyst at the KSA, said that part of the disagreement comes down to what is considered campaign material. All materials are supposed to be approved by the committee. According to Gregory, the CFS representatives don’t consider CFS general materials to count—such as posters or handouts for their “I Am CFS” campaign. But he says they do consider the KSA newsletter to be a campaign material.
The CFS petition also protests how poll clerks have been hired and the KSA appointment of an independent chief returning officer.
Gregory says he expects that students will vote to terminate membership with the CFS. “The campaign is going quite well. There are few students who support membership in the CFS,” he said.
Calls to CFS-BC, national chairperson Amanda Aziz, and CSF-BC chairperson Seamus Reid were not returned.
Meanwhile, Aziz was on campus Tuesday at Simon Fraser University, campaigning in favour of continued CFS membership there, along with a sizable group of students, including students from other universities including Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. The campaign opposed to CFS membership had a much smaller presence on campus.
SFU had a non-binding referendum on CFS membership last year, in which 70 per cent of 1,300 students voted to leave the CFS.
The loss of the SFSS’s membership would be a significant blow to the CFS, which received over $400,000 in membership fees in 2005 from Simon Fraser University students. This funding is divided between the national and provincial organizations.
A SFU students’ union working group struck last year to assess their relationship with the CFS reported a number of issues that led to the referendum. These include allegations that the CFS interferes or is “over-involved” in student union elections.
CFS-BC responded to the submission with its own. It details the organization’s services and lobbying track record. The document states, “No campus, no matter how big or active, has the resources or the political clout to effectively influence the post-secondary education policies of the federal government.” The document does not address the problems alleged in the working group’s submission.
In support of its decision to leave the CFS, the submission by the SFSS working group also cites allegations of financial mismanagement in relation to a loan given to the Douglas Student’s Union (DSU) at a time when serious questions were being raised about that union’s financial controls. A forensic audit of the DSU — ordered to look into “significant deficiencies in internal controls” — reported that the CFS-Services and CFS-BC made three loans, for $100,000 in October 2005, $50,000 in December, and $50,000 in January 2006. The alleged advances took place while Douglas College refused to remit payment of student fees to the students’ union because of concerns about the union’s financial management. The audit also stated that none of the loans were approved by the union and were entered into without proper authorization.
As I recall when a referendum to join the CFS was held at the University of Saskatchewan in 2005, they set up an election board which would have been in violation of the CFS bylaws, but to my knowledge there was no court challenge to that. Perhaps because the USSU was trying to join and not leave, but the inconsistency is notable.
this is crazy. i wonder how many people from other student unions are in bc right now.
I swore aloud when I read this. Could this get any more fucking ridiculous? The CFS is the biggest godforsaken joke in Canada. It would be ridiculous if not for the millions of dollars they flush on lawyer’s fees to stymie the will of students everywhere. Lord love a fucking duck.
Carson, I think you have the UofS story backward – the referendum was successful, but was challenged in court and subsequently deemed of “no force and effect” (I’m not a lawyer so I might have invented those terms) in part because the referendum oversight committee established rules that were in contravention of the USSU constitution.
It would be nice to have a link from the article to court documents (if/when they are available), and also to the SFSS report and CFS-BC answer.
Philippe
Casual Observer,
You are absolutely correct. However, it was the USSU election board that initially ruled the referendum invalid, and when the USSU executive ignored this, a judged ruled the vote “of no force or effect.” My point in my first comment is that the election board was set up prior to the referendum as the ultimate arbiter of the vote, which would contravene CFS bylaws, and there was (apparently) no legal challenge at this point, though a challenge is being levelled against the KSA for among other reasons, deferring to their own bylaws for electoral oversight.
Hi all,
The court documents filed by both sides in this dispute are available at this website:
http://www.kusa.ca/cfsvsksa
Also, the SFSS report on CFS membership and the CFS-BC submission to the SFSS are available here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~cmoray/working_group_submission.pdf
http://www.sfu.ca/~cmoray/cfs_submission.pdf
Quote “These include allegations that the CFS interferes or is “over-involved” in student union elections.”
Ahhh this sounds EXACTLY like my school (UBC-Okanagan). We actually had another CFSer run the CFS backed slate (Students 4 Students). No surprise they won.
The CFS is worse than a joke, they’re an EXPENSIVE joke. If they actually did what they are supposed to (advocate students’ rights and provide organizational force to get things done for cheaper, faster), the CFS would be great. Sadly this is not the case.
Does anyone know what the date is for the injunction hearing is?
This Friday at 10:00 am, Vancouver courthouses.
yes, the no campaign is “less visible” on the SFU campus. mainly because we did not fly people in from Ontario. And because we have to pay the CFS money,so we have less to campaign (actually, we probably pay both campaigns..right?) But I haven’t heard anyone yet who will vote Yes next week. Being swamped by CFS people who sneak into classrooms to “announce the referendum” and then give political speeches..being cornered by two people at once to “convice”. And yes, the “No” campaign posters are being ripped down on a regular basis.. I guess people here are glad when it’s over and the CFS leaves with their Propaganda material…
Dear CFS,
Stop trying to buy time. Yours is up.
Thanks Titus for posting the link.
Just an idea (not from me, actually). What about adding a procedure so if the oversight committee comes to a stalemate, both parties have to agree on an independent arbitrator to rule in one side or another? It would probably be less expensive than courts.
Philippe
what happened in court?
Philippe
An independent arbitrator is absolutely necessary and that is exactly what the KSA brought in. Someone independent with no loyalties to either party. To me, that would be a lot more fair than any partisan committee and it is exactly the reason ElectionsBC is not partisan.
Andrew
That’s a great idea Phillipe, but the CFS’s ROC is specifically designed to lead to this outcome. 2 reps from our side, 2 reps from theirs, and there is absolutely no way to break the many inevitable deadlocks. The CFS reps have repeatedly canceled meetings and stonewalled vital issues (check out their proposed referendum question on page 164 of Lucy Watson’s affadavit) just so that they can have grounds to push back the Kwantlen referendum. On Friday, the judge essentially called them on it, admitting that the CFS reps had essentially bargained in bad faith at the ROC. Press releases forthcoming, don’t worry.
But yeah, that’s precisely why Fred Schiffner was appointed, so that when the ROC had failed to approve materials, hire poll clerks, etc., someone could make those decisions. That is where CFS claims KSA broke the referendum bylaws.
Message from the Vote Yes for Independence Organizing Team…
Hi Everyone,
As you are most likely aware, the CFS took the KSA to Court today in an effort to, among other things, have the KSA sanctioned for pre-campaigning prior to the official campaign period, delay the vote until the fall semester, and to have Fred Schiffner removed from any role in the referendum.
In short, we put together a great case and achieved a significant (though not complete) victory today at the Supreme Court of BC.
Although the dates did get changed, we were able to keep the delay to a minimum. In short, the following points summarize the key outcomes of today’s court battle:
1. The dates of the vote have been moved to April 8 – 10, with the campaign period beginning March 25.
2. The Judge openly criticized the CFS reps on the Referendum Oversight Committee.
3. The Judge has directed the ROC to again try to develop the key rules and other decisions necessary for the referendum to take place, and present them to the Court at 10am on Thursday March 20th. Should the ROC again fail (which KSA lawyers advised the Court that the KSA had very little faith in their ability to reach agreement) on any key matters, then the Court will decide them Thursday. Furthermore, the Judge was quite clear that he believed that the work Fred Schiffner has done up until this point, and the resources and preparation he has done to-date should not be lost or wasted. He made it quite clear that he wanted the ROC to return with a decision anointing his role as CRO, or else they had better be prepared to present a very good reason for not doing so.
4. The CFS’s arguments concerning the pre-campaign period campaigning fell on deaf ears – the Judge chalked-up any such campaigning outside of an official campaign period as being a component of “a free society”. So all campaigning is permitted.
So… we must regroup, recharge, and get ourselves ready for the days ahead. We had all hoped that by this time next week the referendum would be over, but as the saying goes – you can’t always get what you want. But we got what we needed. We are still in the winning seat, and if we can hold onto our momentum and keep our message strong – we’ll win.
In solidarity,
- Vote Yes for Independence Organizing Team
I wonder what the chances are that the Federation would ever agree to something that reasonable….
Question.
Does anyone know how the injunction hearing went? I can’t seem to find the results ANYWHERE
While the idea of an independent arbitrator for the ROC is one that seems interesting, I’d be concerned about how often that independent arbitrator would be called in.
During the CFS/KSA court hearing, we heard how the committee first met in January (a long! time after the petition was submitted) and effectively hadn’t agreed to anything since. I would think that in the end the arbitrator would effectively be setting the referendum rules.
Not that this is a bad thing–I entirely think that the ROC process is designed to fail if there aren’t a majority of people on there who think the same way… 2 pro-CFS and 2 anti-CFS generally results in a deadlock. I bet that there aren’t similar problems when the committee is made up of people who support the CFS.
And significantly more sensible.
However, there is an interesting power dynamic when it comes to referendums on this sort of thing.
The no campaign has nothing to lose. If the yes campaign creates deadlock or breaks rules, they can have the referendum thrown out. If the no campaign gets the referendum thrown out, they win by default.
All of the onus is on the yes campaign to run a clean campaign, while a no campaign has no need to.
Patrick: You have to keep in mind that depending on the question, sometimes YES means to stay in CFS (like at UVic GSS) and sometimes YES means to withdraw (like the proposed Kwantlen question).
But anyway, I suppose you mean that all the onus is on the side which advocates a change from the statu quo… So in a referendum to join CFS, rather than withdraw, it would be the anti-CFS side (rather than the pro-CFS side) which would get the “advantage” you’re talking about, and vice versa.
Not quite, Philippe. In a referendum to join the CFS, the movement (usually) enjoys the support of both the CFS and the current student union executive. Any real opposition to joining is usually done by a handful of unorganized students who certainly don’t have the resources the experience, or the knowledge (or in many cases, the time) necessary to make any sort of appeal to the referendum. Any election oversight will be necessarily stacked; again, both the CFS and the student union want a ‘join’ vote. And finally, the unorganized students are certainly not going to pay any sort of legal fees out of their own pockets to take the referendum to court, even if they understood the process. conversely, the CFS seems to have a great deal of experience in dealing with referendums in court.
I know this was the case at my school, the U of M. Who can stand up to that much organizational might, and on such short notice? The question was decided long before it came to students, we were merely asked to rubber-stamped it.
The referendum system created by the CFS greatly favours gaining and retaining members. I’m sure this is intentional.
Federation referenda are like a Chinese finger trap – easy to get in, nearly impossible to pull out.
Travis: I don’t disagree with you at all, although I am seeing that people who oppose joining CFS are also starting to organize nationally.
I was only commenting on Patrick’s specific point, which is only one point on which there can be an “advantage” in any referendum.
Meghan,
Would you be able to provide a link for where you found that statement?