The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) owes the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) roughly $143,313, according to financial statements.
Until it’s paid off, leaving CFS isn’t an option, said CFS national deputy chairperson Adam Awad.
“Our bylaws are specific about that,” he said. “Our bylaws say that in order for a referendum to take place, all outstanding fees have to be paid.”
According to a current agreement, the debt will only be paid off by 2040. Past CUSA executives agreed to pay off the debt in 30 annual installments of roughly $5,000, but this year’s CUSA executive isn’t clear on where the debt came from.
“We didn’t know the source of when exactly it started, what year specifically,” said vice-president (student issues) Chantle Beeso. “I would assume it is accumulative from previous years.”
The reason for the debt is simple: CUSA gave CFS the wrong amount of student fees, Awad said.
“[The debt] is the difference between the money that should have been collected over the years and the money that had been,” he said.
If CUSA intends to attempt defederation prior to 2041, when the the last payment is due, they’ll have to pay all the money at once.
The CFS defederation debate is almost always on the horizon. Student unions at universities across the country are being sued for attempts to leave the national student organization.
Although a previous attempt at Carleton to defederate was unsuccessful, the issue has been raised again in recent weeks.
A failed referendum question at Carleton, an opinion piece in the Charlatan arguing vehemently for defederation and another arguing equally against, and an incoming CUSA executive that’s made no secret of its dissatisfaction with the CFS point towards another defederation attempt.
However, defederation in the near future might not be possible.
To defederate, several steps have to be taken. First, the CFS requires a certain number of students’ signatures on a petition.
The petition gets sent to the CFS, who then decide if the petition was done correctly, Awad said.
Then a campaign takes place at the university. At that point, students in favour of defederation inform the rest of the student body why they should defederate, Beeso said.
Members of the CFS are also invited to campaign on behalf of the organization. Students then vote in a final referendum.
Even if the debt is paid off, a motion put forward by Carleton’s Graduate Students’ Association (GSA), which is also a member of the CFS, makes the referendum process more complicated.
The 2009 motion increased the percentage of signatures needed to propose a referendum from 10 per cent to 20, in addition to making it so a referendum can also only be held once every five years, and only two membership referenda can be held in one school year.
The reason the percentage was increased was in order to create a sensible minimum threshold, Awad said.
“If 10 students want to hold a vote, if one student wants to hold a vote, is it worth using our student’s money in that way? Or do we want to set up a minimum threshold for that process?” he said.
If students wish to leave, current CUSA councillor and vice-president-elect (finance) Michael De Luca said the CFS should allow them to do so.
“If unions want to leave, they should let them go, and not waste more students’ money on keeping them in something they shouldn’t be in,” De Luca said.
While he said students need to be part of a national organization, De Luca said the CFS isn’t Carleton’s only choice.
“There are others that we can join because we want the best thing for students,” he said.
Personally, De Luca said he didn’t want to give an opinion on defederation, but he’s criticized CUSA giving money to the CFS in previous council meetings.
While CUSA president-elect Alexander Golovko said defederation isn’t a priority on his list, he said he does believe the CFS isn’t as strong and effective as a student organization as it once was.
Golovko said the debt CUSA owes the CFS will remain an issue because of its financial implications for CUSA, which is currently facing a budget deficit.
“The topic will definitely be discussed ahead in order to avoid potential complications in the next 30 years,” he said.
One of the main CFS critics at Carleton, fourth-year political science student Delroy Dyer, said Carleton definitely needs to defederate.
“The . . . most obvious reason is that we have few benefits for the [money] that we give to the CFS,” Delroy said.
But Beeso argues that the CFS offers Carleton students a great networking opportunity.
“We can talk about what they do on their campus, how that works, if we can apply that to our campus. It’s a really great network of students who are doing similar work,” she said, adding that there were also more practical benefits.
“Even if it’s just the ability for us to bulk purchase all the free swag that we give out in the year, like the water bottles. All those things come through our network of being members, and it’s for a small fee,” she said.
No matter how strongly people feel about defederation, roughly $140,000 stands between students and any defederation attempt.
Click here for The Charlatan’s take on this story.
