Undergraduate students can vote “yes” or “no” on the continuation of Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) membership with the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) at a referendum to be held Oct. 17-19.
The CFS is a national union providing student services for more than 64 university and college student unions across Canada. The organization also lobbies on student issues to the federal and provincial governments.
Each Carleton undergraduate student pays around an annual $17 in fees as part of their tuition towards CFS services, totalling just over $440,000 in fees, as of this year. Currently, CUSA is Local 1 of the federation—a position the association has held since the CFS’ founding conference at Carleton in 1981 as its first member.
The referendum’s announcement comes in the wake of “CU Later CFS,” CUSA’s ongoing campaign to defederate from the CFS.
The campaign began in the 2017-18 school year, launched by former CUSA president Zameer Masjedee. It has since been continued by current CUSA president David Oladejo.
Earlier this year, CUSA collected signatures on a petition from students that were recently approved by the federation’s executive committee. The signatures were the first requirement for the association, according to the CFS’ bylaws.
Oladejo said next week’s referendum is the last step before defederation, pending students’ votes.
“I think it starts with the return investment that we’re getting,” he said. “It’s important from time to time to take a step back and look at things, whether they’re a good investment or not.”
Oladejo added CUSA already offers the services towards which students pay CFS membership fees.
“I’m not going to discount the important work the CFS does. . . but it’s kind of, in my mind, a redundant fees to pay if your students’ association does all of that work in-house,” he said.
Kieran Moloney, the Carleton Conservatives (CC)’s president, said the CC is launching a campaign to support CUSA’s defederation from the CFS.
“[The CFS] is spending Carleton students’ money in a way that is disrespectful of students by not employing a democratic process for how they spend that money, and how they run in general,” Moloney said. “The CFS is essentially putting its hand into the pockets of students to pay for their employees’ salaries and to fund their own political agenda.”
But, Nour Alideeb, CFS-Ontario’s chairperson, said the CFS offers important services at the provincial and federal level that CUSA cannot counter.
“At a time like right now, when we’re going to be facing a lot of austerity and budget cuts from the provincial government where we don’t know what’s going to happen, there’s a real chance for us to come together and have a united voice when we’re lobbying the government on student issues,” Alideeb said.
She added that the $17 membership fee per student is not a large price to pay.
“We have strength in numbers, and we have a proven track record for making real change happen,” Alideeb said. “Students pay up to $17 for dinners, in the grand scheme of things, that’s really not a large figure for how much we offer.”
Ashley Courchene, the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) vice-president (finance), said the GSA is not in favour of defederation.
“I think without the CFS, we wouldn’t have the democratic and open forum to discuss student issues and look for ways to enhance the student experience on campus” he said. “Isolated, you can’t really do much, but when you have student unions coming together to collaborate on ideas—which the CFS allows for—I think these issues can be advocated more strongly when we have more students.”
Courchene said the GSA’s mandate will likely not allow them to defederate from the CFS anytime soon since their mandate language extends their advocacy campaigns on a national scale. To work on issues such as sexual violence and Indigenous reconcilliation at the national level, the GSA is exclusively supported by the CFS, he added.
According to the CFS’ bylaws, CUSA is required to have a voter turnout of at least 10 per cent of undergraduate population to validate the referendum—roughly about 2,600 students out of Carleton’s 26, 321 undergraduates. Fifty-one per cent of the voter turnout, must vote “No” on the referendum in order for CUSA to defederate.
If these requirements are not met—either a lack of voter turnout or a lack of majority vote—CUSA will be required to wait five years before petitioning for another referendum.
Oladejo said the timing of the referendum and using paper ballots to vote is not ideal for voter turnout.
“Paper ballots are not the most effective way to get student voices especially here at Carleton, where we do we have a decent-sized population, but we do have a commuter population—who, especially, on the days of voting might not be around to cast in person,” he said.
He added the timing of the referendum is another issue CUSA faces in terms of voter turnout.
“I think the fact that our vote was placed three days before reading week doesn’t really help the scenario because traditionally, we know that a lot of students, if [they] don’t have midterms, go home as early as possible,” he said.
But, Alideeb said she thinks paper ballots ensure a better voting process.
“It’s actually a conversation we’ve had with Elections Ontario, regarding online votes, and they said it’s not an option that is viable yet. There’s still technology being developed that is trying to ensure the sanctity of the vote, and keeping it honest,” she said.
“Unfortunately, as students, we never really have a break,” she added. “We have midterms before reading week, and we have midterms after reading week. There’s never really a perfect time.”
Oladejo said he thinks the largest problem with campaigning on either side is the lack of knowledge from students about what the CFS does.
“We found that a majority of our students don’t even know what the CFS is, so explaining and just educating them on what all this is, is very important,” he said. “I encourage students to get out, and to engage and hear both sides of the story and then make an informed vote.”
Tulca Saleh, first-year food sciences student, said she agreed.
“I don’t think I’ll be voting this time around because I don’t nearly have information to vote,” Saleh said.
Fifth-year biology student Chanel Nakla said she feels the same way, adding campaign methods need to change if either side hopes to convince students.
“It’s really annoying when they walk around and try to get to you with this stuff anyway, but I won’t just vote because I don’t have enough information . . . I also don’t like the way they approach the whole thing,” Nakla said.
Campaigning for the referendum began on Oct. 8, and will continue to campaign until Oct. 19—the last day for students to vote for either side.
Photo by Jasmine Foong
