Concordia University’s student union entered a legal battle with the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) this month, making it the latest student union to try to leave the national lobby group.
The Concordia Student Union (CSU) is the eighth student union to sue the CFS in the last three years.
In March 2010, CSU held a referendum to find out if students wanted to stay with the CFS or cut ties. It found that 72 per cent wanted out, with 2,348 students voting to leave the CFS and only 931 voting to stay, according to campus newspaper The Link.
A year later, the CFS still doesn’t recognize that the referendum took place. This is CSU’s main claim in the lawsuit, said their lawyer Philippe-André Tessier.
“They just want the students’ voices to be heard,” he said.
No one at the CFS could be reached for comment on the case.
Tessier said the CSU is trying to claim damages for a breach of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. He said the CFS’s refusal to recognize the students’ referendum limits their freedom of association.
“If you have a right to associate, you also have a right to stop associating,” he said.
The CSU is filing for punitive damages amounting to $100,000.
Under CFS’s Motion 6 bylaw, instated November 2009, it can limit referendums. Only two member unions are allowed to hold a referendum per three-month period, and the referendums are only valid if at least 20 per cent of students in the union vote. The CSU claims these new bylaws were not passed according to protocol, Tessier explained.
CFS claims that CSU owes them over a million dollars in fees, which the CSU denies. CSU pays the CFS over $300,000 in fees annually.
Tessier said the CSU tried to reason with the CFS before going to court. “The way CSU behaved was in good faith,” he said. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t any possibility to get understanding from the CFS.”
Tessier said he thinks the CSU has a good case, otherwise he wouldn’t have recommended going to court. But he said the lawsuit will be a lengthy one. “It will be years,” he said.
McGill’s Post-Graduate Student Society has been in a similar lawsuit with CFS for over a year.
The University of Victoria’s Graduate Students’ Society successfully left the CFS in 2008, before Motion 6, over concerns that the CFS was squandering the millions it receives in fees every year.
The undergraduate University of Victoria Students’ Society went to the British Columbia Supreme Court earlier this year for the right to hold a referendum to split from the CFS.
