Executives and councillors at the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) are preparing to circulate a petition to determine if students are interested in defederating from the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), CUSA vice-president (finance) Michael De Luca announced Feb. 25.
Since its creation in 1981 on Carleton’s campus, many campus organizations have argued against the CFS and attempted defederation. De Luca’s announcement to attempt to campaign for defederation is not the first, but the latest.
“It’s time to put the question [of defederation] to the students,” he said, as students pay an annual fee of roughly $15 each.
The CFS was formed to provide students with an effective and united voice, provincially and nationally. Currently, more than 80 student unions representing over 500,000 students belong to the union.
“Even though both the federal and provincial governments play important roles in the delivery of post-secondary education, some student unions only participated in either a national or a provincial organization, but not both,” said CFS national chairperson Adam Awad.
“As a consequence, there was not a common voice on issues of concern to students.”
De Luca said students do not need the CFS to have a national voice.
“Universities are capable of working across the nation to achieve certain ends, and we do,” he said.
In May, De Luca said CUSA tried to repair their relationship with the CFS. Since the larger union proved unresponsive, CUSA’s incoming executive campaigned on a platform of defederation for the upcoming year.
“The CFS used to be a good organization, but over time their principles eroded and they fell into corruption and practices where they put the interests of an ideology above others,” De Luca said. “Students don’t need a corporation that profits off their backs to be a voice for them.”
Awad said the CFS has fulfilled one of its purposes through its role in the regulation of tuition fees in Canada. However De Luca said they successfully reduced student fees by $31 independently of the CFS.
Awad said CUSA is not able to organize a petition to defederate under CFS bylaws. According to Awad, the process of submitting a petition was designed to give agency to individual members, not the associations involved.
This means that any student belonging to the CFS can submit a petition, but not students directly representing CUSA, according to Awad.
The bylaw in question states, “the individual members of the Federation collectively belonging to a member local association will have sole authority to initiate, by petition signed by not less than ten percent (10%) of the individual members and delivered to the National Executive.”
Because CUSA is a voting member, “organizing a petition on membership falls outside of its rights and is contrary to responsibilities,” Awad said.
De Luca said he was unable to comment on this statement at the time.
