All Posts Tagged With: "Canadian Federation of Students"

Protests underway from coast to coast

Today, students from Memorial University of Newfoundland to the University of British Columbia are participating in the National Day of Action organized by the Canadian Federation of Students.

Through marches and on social media, they’re promoting the idea that Education is a Right.

Their explicit demands are for lower tuition fees, less student debt and more public funding.

The CFS says that the average student with debt owes $25,000 by graduation and that public funding has dropped from 81 per cent of operating costs of universities 20 years ago to 57 per cent today—all while tuition has risen from 14 per cent of operating funding to more than 35 per cent.

In other words, students are paying more of their own costs for university than ever before, which makes it difficult for low and middle-income students to get through school and then pay off debts.

The campaign is being discussed widely on Twitter with the tags #feb1 #cfsfcee or #cdnpse.

Peggy Nash, a candidate for the New Democratic Party’s leadership has already tweeted in solidarity and provided a link to her Plan to make Post-Secondary Education Accessible.

In Newfoundland, which already has among the lowest tuition anywhere, conservative Premier Kathy Dunderdale attended a National Day of Action event this morning and said that, during her lifetime, she’d like to see students’ first degrees paid for by the province, reports VOCM radio.

Beyond Toronto and Ottawa national lobby group doesn’t pack a lot of punch

In the wake of UVic students voting to leave the Canadian Federation of Students last week, maybe it’s time to take stock of how national the “effective and united voice” really is.

The CFS trumpets that they have 500,000 members from over 80 student unions. But here are the facts:

• The CFS has no healthy, stable relationship with any universities in Alberta or Quebec
• The CFS has no real undergraduate representation in Alberta, Quebec, Prince Edward Island or New Brunswick
• There are no student unions with over 10,000 full-time students west of Manitoba represented by the CFS

When you break down the 83 “Locals” of the CFS, you find the amount of support they have from decently-sized universities is rather small, except in Toronto and Ottawa. That those two cities are the media and political capitals of Canada can explain why the CFS still gets the attention they do, but outside of those two bubbles, the CFS doesn’t pack a lot of punch.

To start with, let’s see who comprises those 83 Locals. Nineteen are colleges. Another 11 have undergraduate populations of less than 3,000. This is not to besmirch the good people of the Saint Paul University Students’ Association (Local 85) and other small institutions, but these locals are never going to carry a lot of weight.

Then, you add in the fact that at many schools, there are multiple student unions. At University of Toronto alone, there is the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union, the Association of Part-Time Undergraduate Students of the University of Toronto, the University of Toronto Students’ Union and the University of Toronto at Mississauga Students’ Union. That may be five locals, but it’s just one school. So let’s lump them together.

Then, there’s Prince Edward Island undergraduates, Saskatchewan undergraduates, Guelph undergrdautes, Concordia students, Post-Graduates at McGill, Graduate students at Calgary, SFU students, and UVic students. All of them have voted to defederate (or in the case of Saskatchewan, never legally joined in the first place), yet all are listed by the CFS as members on their website. And while the CFS can use plenty of semantic or legal arguments to claim they are still part of the organization, you can’t claim they are happy, active members.

When you consider all that, which student unions at moderately-sized universities are left? And which of them represent students at large, national universities? We’ll go province by province, noting when the CFS only represents graduate students, and bolding any school that is either the largest in its province, or has more than 15,000 full-time students (as measured by the AUCC).

• British Columbia: UBC-Okanagan, Capilano, Kwantlen, Vancouver Island University, and Thompson Rivers.
• Alberta: None
• Saskatchewan: U of Regina, U of Saskatchewan Grad. Students
• Manitoba: U of Manitoba, U of Winnipeg
• Ontario: Carleton, Lakehead, Laurentian, Nipissing, U of Ottawa, Ryerson, U of Toronto, Trent, U of Windsor, York, Brock Grad. Students, Guelph Grad. Students, McMaster Grad. Students, UWO Grad. Students, Wilfrid Laurier Grad Students
• Quebec: None
• New Brunswick: U of New Brunswick Grad. Students
• Prince Edward Island: UPEI Grad. Students
• Nova Scotia: None
• Newfoundland: Memorial

Now yes, this list misses out on plenty of small schools, and plenty of schools the CFS argues are still part of their organization. But this is the backbone of the CFS now. And outside of Toronto and Ottawa, it’s not particularly strong.

The “Canadian Federation of University Students from Ottawa and Toronto Along With College and Graduate Students From Across the Land” might not roll off the tongue—but it’s probably the most accurate description of the CFS as it currently stands.

Students need to get real if they want to be taken seriously

Some political savants participating in the Canadian Federation of Students’ Day of Action decided it would be a good idea to wheel a guillotine into a crowd and stage a mock execution as a way to protest tuition fees.

The demonstration—which can only be described as one of the most sensible and appropriate of its kind—was captured in a video shot by the ‘fax, a news channel run by the journalism students at University of King’s College. The clip shows members of a political street theatre troupe setting up a guillotine emblazoned with the sign, “The Cuts We’d Like To See.” One fellow proceeds to chant, “NDP, Liberal, Tory—same damn story,” while his comrades bang drums and cheer. He then flops a dummy on the guillotine—a dummy, which, I’m assuming, is supposed to be representative of some political figure—and leads the crowd in a few rounds of “They all must go! They all must go!” Yes, you’re watching a protest taking place in Canada.

The blade drops, unfortunately proving itself faulty as it fails to sever the head of its fee-happy victim. No fear—an executioner swoops in to manually break the neck and drop the head in the basket. And the crowd erupts in whoops and cheers. Beautiful, isn’t it?

The crowd assembled February 2 to protest, among other things, the rising cost of tuition and the expiration of a fee freeze on March 31. According to reports, more than one thousand students gathered from various Halifax universities to demonstrate against the rising cost of post-secondary education in Nova Scotia. The issue, of course, I can understand. How a medieval decapitation device works into the equation—well, there I’m having a bit more trouble.

For politicians to truly understand the financial pressures faced by students, there’s going to have to be some sort of dialogue. That dialogue is made immeasurably more difficult if students choose to stage these politicians’ preemptive deaths.  And then, of course, there’s that nagging issue of the gross barbarity of the scene. These are not things we do in Canada. (Sorry, am I ‘Othering’?)

If students want political leaders to take them seriously, they need to start behaving seriously.  That means no more mock executions, postcard bombardments, or other high style/low substance demonstrations. I hope not to see a public stoning, symbolic of corporate “blows” to education, at the next Student Day of Action.

CFS still lacks transparency, accountability

The Canadian Federation of Students wrapped up their semi-annual general meeting about a week ago, while last year’s meeting generated a great deal of controversy, as my colleague Danielle Webb has pointed out, this year’s meeting was rather tame.

But as a court battle in Saskatchewan shows, the CFS still hasn’t moved passed the issues that gripped last year’s meeting.

The majority of controversy in 2009 was fomented by several student unions that wished to leave the group. At a time when federation supporters were intent on making it harder to leave, several student unions introduced a series of reforms whose main thrust was to make it easier to defederate. The hope, according to backers of the reforms, was that by introducing a large number of motions, at least some would get through. Instead the “reform package” was defeated omnibus.

While these issues may not have come up at the meeting this year, the main reason is that the majority of student unions, including the three university members from Quebec, who pushed for “reform,” and who wish to leave the organization, didn’t show up.

The reason? At least for the Concordia Student Union, it’s that they no longer see themselves as CFS members. Instead of waiting for the CFS national office to set referendum dates, a process that can take years, several student unions went ahead and held their own referendums, likely counting on the courts to be more receptive than CFS leadership. As well several unions that requested referendums were denied on the grounds that they owed the CFS significant amounts of money for unpaid membership fees, in one case over $1 million.

These unions aren’t the first to be in a situation where their membership has voted to leave the organization but the CFS has refused to recognize the vote. In 2008 students at Simon Fraser and Cape Breton University voted to leave the organization. Despite the fact that the CFS participated in the referendums, at least initially, the CFS chose not to recognize the results. Both unions are still listed as members on the CFS website.

Leaving the organization without its permission can be a long road. Acadia, one of several schools where students voted to leave the CFS in 1996, was still facing legal action 10 years later.

But there’s something more unsettling about the picture of unity that came out of this year’s meeting.

All of the candidates for the three at-large positions on the organization’s national executive (chair, deputy chair and treasurer) ran unopposed. A similar thing happened last year, with only one serious candidate running for each position, the other candidates being from student unions who backed the “reform package.”

That’s not a sign of democracy. I’m sure we can all think of many countries that hold elections where only one name appears on the ballot, would you call any of those nations democratic?

Rather, it’s a sign that decisions are being made in back rooms, not on the plenary floor.

I cannot think of any reason why, two years in a row, in any large organization – especially one whose voting membership is made up of student politicians – we would not see multiple serious candidates standing for the organization’s top positions. A unified organization with a healthy culture of democracy should see multiple candidates with similar vision but different experience and priorities standing for those positions.

But even if the CFS did have more candidates seeking election to its highest positions there are still issues with transparency. While this year saw the CFS allow two journalists into parts of the meeting, one English and one French, a step up from last year when only an English journalist was accredited, no media was allowed in to the candidates’ speeches. It is incomprehensible why an organization that claims to represent such a large number of students, and to do so in a democratic manner would bar journalists – especially student journalists – from campaign speeches by candidates for the organization’s top positions.

The policy of only allowing one or two reporters is also concerning. The majority of student newspapers in the country are members of the Canadian University Press and share content through the CUP Newswire, in exactly the same way as the content generated by the two individuals approved by CFS was shared. More student journalists, wherever they are from, would mean more stories for all CUP papers. The CFS’ media policy also cuts non-CUP papers out from their meetings entirely.

Moreover, CFS requires reporters to sign an incredibly restrictive agreement in order to get access. The majority of real debate takes place in closed sessions. By the time most motions reach the plenary, where reporters are allowed, they have essentially been decided.  They are also forbidden to conduct interviews with any delegates until after the meeting is over.

I have never heard of any organization in Canada forcing journalists to hogtie themselves like this to gain any level of access, let alone such meager access.

While I recognize that the CFS, like all organizations, does have a need to conduct some of its affairs behind closed doors, given that the delegates at these meetings supposedly represent students, don’t they owe those students at least some degree of accountability?

Last year, due to these extremely restrictive policies several student journalists, including myself, attended the meeting as student union delegates. When CFS executives found out about this they threatened to revoke the credentials of the one reporter they were planning to allow in unless these stories were not published on the CUP wire. During the course of that meeting, a McGill Daily reporter and I were informed that if we did not stop posting to Twitter from our newspaper’s accounts even the limited media access might be denied in the future.

So while the CFS’ new executives may have enjoyed “near unanimous” support at this meeting let’s not forget that the organization is facing student initiated legal actions across the country and their presence in Quebec has been effectively reduced to a single English-language CEGEP.

Student unions pour money into political causes that many members don’t even know about, let alone support

The story made headlines everywhere: it was Feb. 11, 2009, and Daniel Ferman was a member of Drop YFS, a group dedicated to overthrowing the York Federation of Students. Drop YFS was presenting a petition with 5,000 signatures—enough to stage a coup of sorts. They were protesting the student union’s support for a teachers’ strike, which would potentially leave students on the hook for missed class time. They were also against the union backing the Israeli Apartheid Week, which many pro-Israel students despised. As the press conference began, Ferman and his fellow Drop YFS members were faced with a crush of student union members who came in to denounce the petition rally. After a volley of shouting, the crowd moved to the Hillel student lounge where some of the Drop YFS members took refuge. “Students were barricaded in the lounge,” says Ferman, who was Hillel @ York’s president at the time and helped organize the Drop YFS effort. “It got very nasty. Police were called. There were racist slurs.”

Students like Ferman don’t think it’s the student government’s role to take sides on political issues. “I think students have every right to speak up when they feel student dollars are promoting hate and a toxic atmosphere on campus,” says Ferman. Since the 1980s, student unions have been growing in power. They take money from undergraduates every year, which is charged separate from but alongside tuition, and they’re supposed to work for students. Some of that cash funds services, such as health and dental coverage, and student athletics. But much of it goes to advocacy and clubs students may find offensive. “They’d taken very controversial stances on what to fund in pro-life versus pro-choice issues, on Tamil issues going on in Sri Lanka. On every worldwide issue, they’d taken a position,” Ferman says of the YFS, which operates with a $2-million budget. They rarely take the position he would take.

The Canadian Federation of Students—an umbrella organization for student unions—has been heavily criticized for rash advocacy using student funds. The national organization, with its provincial subsidiaries, lobbies on behalf of 600,000 student members across Canada. These “members,” who automatically gain that status if their student union is a member organization, each pay $4.01 per semester to the CFS. In 2010, that came to $3.7 million in membership fee revenue—money used to fund the not-for-profit’s advocacy work. Students also pay an average of $4 per semester to be members of their provincial CFS. That’s before student union fees, which average out at around $30 per student, depending on the school. CFS national chairperson David Molenhuis acknowledges that some of the national campaigns, such as its current effort to fight the Canadian Blood Services’ decision to ban gay men from donating blood, are hot issues—but he doesn’t think they’re controversial. “They attempt to address head-on issues that perhaps college and university administrators don’t feel comfortable addressing,” he says. Some students also feel uncomfortable with their fees going to such politically sensitive issues.

For example, last June, the CFS wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty joining the cry for a public inquiry into the “unprecedented curtailment of civil liberties” that took place at the G20. “The federation stands up for the rights of students to participate and to assemble publicly and to participate in demonstrations,” said the letter. “We defend the rights of students to mobilize in public, and the G20 is no exception.”

Some students at the University of Ottawa were upset to learn that not only does the CFS take a political stand on the G20, their own student union spent at least $1,000 to rent a coach bus to shuttle about 50 protesters to Toronto during the G20. Student Peter Flynn, who also heads up the University of Ottawa Campus Conservatives, blasted the expenditure as a “blatant misuse” of student fees. “I highly doubt that every single student who has to pay those fees would be happy to know their money was being spent to send a few individuals to protest for the weekend,” Flynn told the Ottawa Citizen.

York student Gregory Kay was also irked by his student union’s support for G20 protests. The YFS and the student union at the University of Toronto co-sponsored “Toronto vs. the G20: a teach-in.” Class included Black Bloc tactics, which ended up seeing storefronts and public property smashed during the summit in downtown Toronto. “That’s something most students don’t believe in at all,” says Kay, who is the business representative for the YFS board of directors. “Most students aren’t anti-capitalist. They’re not interested in civil disobedience.”

Of course, if students are unhappy with their student government, they aren’t doing much to change it. While voter turnout tends to be higher when contentious issues can be resolved with a ballot, the average voter turnout sits at between 25 and 30 per cent. Many students see student government as too divisive—or too inflexible—to even bother running. Ferman, for one, considered running for a seat on the executive in 2009, but couldn’t put his academic career on hold for a year as the bylaws dictate. He ran for—and won—a seat on the board of directors instead.

“It’s an interesting dichotomy—that the student president isn’t even a student,” he says. “There are lots of inherent problems with the organization, but the lack of flexibility is a major one.” In late August 2010, the university’s ombudsman released a report saying the student union’s electoral process needed a massive makeover, making recommendations Ferman believes might one day legitimize the organization. “Now the onus is on the student federation to take some of these recommendations to heart.”

Photo: Christinne Muschi/Reuters

The Canadian Federation of Students Ontario joins One Toronto campaign to provide ‘alternate view’ of upcoming Toronto mayoral election

For months, Toronto has been rapt in the rhetoric of its upcoming municipal election and the fervor’s only escalating as the October 25th D-Day draws nearer. The most recent poll shows Rob Ford, the outspoken Etobicoke councillor who’s turned the phrase “gravy train” into everyday vernacular, has a commanding 24-point lead over next-in-line George Smitherman. And that lead has many Torontonians worried. Ford has come out swinging against wasteful spending at City Hall, promising to slash the numbers at City Council from 44 to 22, abolish the city’s fair wage policy, end the war on cars and a plethora other pledges that have left some residents panicked and running for the hills (quite literally). Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick bizarrely equated voting for Rob Ford with some sort of post-drunken-one-night-stand venereal disease, while others have hopped on an “Anyone but Ford” bandwagon, rallying to stop the privatization-pledging maniac before he ruins Toronto’s national and international reputation.

Then, Wednesday, a new campaign was launched with the help of the Ontario branch of the Canadian Federation of Students. The One Toronto campaign, as it calls itself, alleges it will not be telling voters how to cast their ballots, though the message is clear even to the most credulous Toronto voters; keep the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) public, focus on arts and social infrastructure, invest in education, make Toronto more diverse—which all, loosely translated, means don’t vote for Rob Ford. If that wasn’t obvious enough, this line from One Toronto’s website makes it crystal clear:

Right now the debate is very negative, focused on what is wrong inside City Hall, and how to slash away the more and more aspects of city government. Shouldn’t we be engaged in a debate on how to ensure that City Hall plays the most positive role possible in our lives?

CFS Ontario chair Sandy Hudson was on hand for the One Toronto launch Wednesday morning. Along with former United Way chair Dr. Joseph Wong, Luminato CEO Janice Price and journalist Michele Landsberg, Hudson took to the mic for the inaugural presentation. Hudson’s address focused on voter disengagement among city youth, an old but unyielding problem at all levels of politics.

Estimations of voter turnout show that just 43.8 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 24 voted in the 2006 general election, up from 37 per cent in 2004. Though the numbers improved in 2006, youth turnout at the polls was still 19 percentage points below the national average. With youth apathy also a major factor at the provincial and municipal levels, strategists have created campaigns such as ApathyIsBoring.com and Student Connect to get young people interested in what’s going on in government. There have been other, more eccentric efforts made by our neighbors down south, including Sean “P. Diddy” Combs’ 2004 “voting is cool” campaign, which curiously equated apathy with preemptive mortality (“Vote or Die!”) and Rock the Vote’s efforts to get young Americans to the polls during the 2008 presidential elections.

The logic behind these movements is clear; politicians won’t take youth issues seriously if they don’t show up to the polls. Why waste time lobbying to a demographic that is unlikely to go out and vote?

The problem is: One Toronto isn’t a campaign to get young people’s voices heard. It’s a pluralistic movement pushing a specific yet holistic vision for the city. In an interview with the Toronto Star, Hudson justifies the allegiance saying, “Students are paying lots and lots of money to go to school, so they need services that are going to be saving them money, but also helping them to get around.”

Certainly services such as the discounted TTC Metropass for post-secondary students secured this year are to the benefit of students; but just because an issue like transportation sometimes affects students doesn’t mean union fees should rightfully be allocated to a multidimensional campaign like One Toronto. Indeed, I could argue that the worn out sole of my left shoe is a student issue if it makes me late for class, but I’d be hesitant to go spend someone else’s money on an entire clothing initiative.

Municipal issues are a tough sell for student union dollars. Tuition fees are a provincial issue. Professional licenses, to practice medicine or law for example, are federally regulated. City laws, on the other hand, dictate whether you pay five cents for a plastic bag at a grocery store—it takes a little bit of extrapolation to connect that to the larger student movement.

The added fact that One Toronto so obviously supports certain candidates over others (even if it won’t name names) makes the CFS backing that much more incredulous. Dare I say–an example of wasteful spending?

- Photo by mars_discovery_district

At a cost of $20-million, the UPass is no longer about post-secondary affordability

When British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell announced the creation of a universal $30/month transit pass for all post-secondary students in the province yesterday, the Canadian Federation of Students applauded the move.

“The U-Pass is an investment in the next generation, in the economy and the environment,” Nimmi Takkar, chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students–BC was quoted as saying in a press release. “This program is going to make a major difference in students’ lives and go a long way towards building a transit culture in British Columbia.”

Just as fast as the CFS media machine cranked out its press release, opponents to the move started decrying the U-Pass announcement as a draconian, paternalistic move typical of our “nanny state.” One reader who responded to On Campus’s news story argued that “students are forced to pay whether they ride the bus or not” despite Translink’s “crappy” service, and who the hell are you anyways to tell me I shouldn’t drive my car?!

Such critics are right about one thing: the policy is not so much allowing students to “access” affordable transportation as it is compelling them to buy in. Nevertheless, none of the schools will sign on until the U-Pass is approved through a student referendum. Although I’m sure it’s annoying for car-loving, suburb-dwelling students out there to be outnumbered by their more green-conscience colleagues, that’s how our democratic society works–so live with it.

The U-Pass isn’t a new idea, but this announcement marks an interesting deviation from the original intent of the program that is worth noting. Originally, the program was intended to be revenue-neutral; basically, Translink would add up its cost of providing transit to a campus then split that cost among the students of that school, regardless of whether they took the bus or not. Translink didn’t make any money off the deal, but they didn’t lose any either. In essence, non-transit-using students subsidized the cost of a transit pass for everyone else. This is why negotiations for U-Passes at other colleges and universities in the Lower Mainland broke down; while the economics of the program made sense at big schools like UBC and SFU, the cost per student was significantly higher elsewhere, and student unions there wouldn’t accept the higher cost.

And so yesterday’s announcement represents a major shift in the philosophy of the project. The $30/month U-Pass is set to cost the provincial government some $20 million. No longer is this a revenue-neutral feel-good program, but a significantly expensive one. And, if this is truly about lowering expenses for students, it’s worth considering whether that $20 million would be better spent on, say, provincial needs-based grants.

But that argument is moot. Because the reality is that the U-Pass program is no longer about affordability, if it ever was, but about promoting a shift towards the “transit culture” Takkar refers to in the CFS release. Using economic means to push people into making more environmentally-friendly choices is par for the course here in B.C., where the country’s first carbon tax was implemented and where car-drivers have long subsidized transit through Translink’s gas tax.

My point is that this program should be recognized for what it is, rather than congratulating ourselves for supporting broke students. And that’s where The Province newspaper hits the nail on the head: “But why should students be singled out? Why is a 19-year-old university student any more worthy of government support than another 19-year-old starting out in life in a job? If the aim is to promote post-secondary education, a more direct way is to further subsidize tuition.”

If we accept the notion that the U-Pass isn’t the best way to subsidize post-secondary education, then the question becomes: is it fair to force students to purchase transit passes that they may not use in the name of promoting transit? Is it appropriate for universities to administer a fee that is fundamentally driven by the desire to shift society?

I don’t have the answer to those questions. But, for the record, I rode my bike to the office today in the rain.

Concerns arise over whether the education exception is neutered by digital locks

Proposed amendments to Canada’s arcane Copyright Act has provoked sharp disagreement within the education sector.

Introduced last Wednesday by Industry Minister Tony Clement and Heritage Minister James Moore, the amendments expand rules governing “fair use,” making several exceptions for education.

Under the proposed legislation, the use of copyrighted material in the classroom would be permitted over the internet, allowing students to legally view material during and after class, as well as from remote locations. To illustrate the change, the government has used the example of music students, those in the classroom as well as those studying remotely, to perform protected songs together, if it forms part of a lesson.

Students would also be permitted to print one copy of material delivered electronically by teachers. Other changes include a provision delinking material from “specific technologies” so that protected material that already include exceptions for education may be copied to a variety of formats before being presented to students.

One of the biggest proposed amendments involves the use of recorded broadcasts of current affairs programs, which will no longer have to be paid for. Documentaries, however, are not included in this provision. Another important amendment is permission for librarians to digitize copyrighted material for the purposes of inter-library loans.

The Copyright Act was last updated in 1997 before the advent of many media platforms such as MP3 players. The new legislation proposes to bring the law in line with common activities such as transferring media from one platform to another for personal use.

The legislation also aims to provide creators with new ways to protect their intellectual property. Most controversially, the government will protect the use of technological protection measures, or digital locks. It would become illegal for the locks to be circumvented, even in cases where copying material was permitted by other provisions in the bill.

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada has given the proposed legislation cautious praise. AUCC president Paul Davidson noted that the bill contains many changes that the university sector suggested during government consultations last summer. He said that the AUCC is “very pleased that the bill amends the fair dealing provision to include the purpose of education.” However, the AUCC has expressed concern regarding the “overly strict prohibition against circumventing the technical measures.”

Similarly, Tina Robichaud, chair of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) said the changes will be “immensely beneficial for students, teachers and institutions.”

Others have found it nearly impossible to applaud expansions to fair use given the protection provided for digital locks. “By imposing a blanket provision against all circumvention, the government will lock down a vast amount of digital material, effectively preventing its use for research, education and innovation, and curtailing the user rights of Canadians,” said David Robinson of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.

The Canadian Federation of Students agrees. “The government has indicated a willingness to compromise. Step one is listening to Canadians and abandoning blanket protections for digital locks,” said national chairperson David Molenhuis.

The CFS Task Force on Racism final report sums up their findings from fourteen schools

A “culture of racism” exists on Ontario campuses, according to a report released Monday by the Canadian Federation of Students.

The report, commissioned by the CFS Task Force on Campus Racism lists more than 50 recommendations in over 15 categories for schools to counter racism in daily campus life—from the classroom to campus media.

The group conducted seventeen hearings at fourteen campuses where they spoke with “racialised” students about their experiences with racism on campus.

Cases are sourced in the report from these hearings, including incidents of Blackface, when White people paint their faces black for entertainment or performance purposes.

The report also highlighted, that “multicultural” events often designed to celebrate diversity, sometimes hinder it, by promoting token stereotypes and not representing true “culture.”

In their conclusion, the task force recommends that schools adopt their recommendations into individual policies. Theses recommendations, the report says, are all in accordance with the Ontario Human Rights Code.

But the code, the report says, “puts the onus on institutions and organisations to implement a human rights framework.”

Granting councils to get fellowship funding for new PhDs

In a budget that is light on new spending, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty did pledge new funding for a post-doctoral program. Over five years, the federal government will provide $45 million to the federal research granting councils to create post-doctoral fellowships. The program will establish 140 fellowships annually, valued at $70,000 per year for two years each.

Related: Budget 2010: Why don’t you get a job?

Budget 2010: Much ado about nothing

However, to put the new program into context, in 2009 the federal government pledged $87.5 million over three years, as opposed to five, for the Canada Graduate Scholarships. (Read Paul Wells’ analysis here.)

The new fellowships are aimed at creating a “highly skilled workforce” and are intended to be “internationally competitive.” The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada has praised the new program. “The fellowship program, funded at $45 million over five years, will be internationally competitive and will help attract and keep talented recent PhD graduates in Canada. Their skills and knowledge will help drive innovative research and discoveries in universities, industry and other knowledge sectors,” the AUCC said in a media release.

The Canadian Federation of Students had hoped the budget would have increased funding to the existing Canada Graduate Scholarships program. “In this budget, the government ignored recommendations made by researchers, professors and students,” the CFS said.