The Carleton Food Collective has completed an audited statement of its financial position and is in the process of bringing it forward to the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) in order to receive their annual levy, which was refunded to students last year.
The collective operates a vegan food collective called the Garden Spot, also known as the G-Spot.
The collective’s organizers met with CUSA president Folarin Odunayo, Carleton’s associate vice-president (students and enrolment), and vice-president (finance and administration) Duncan Watt in July and agreed the levy would be reinstated if the group could provide more financial documents, according to collective member Etienne Lefebvre.
The request included an audited statement of their financial position, a budget, and a list of events and services the group has planned for this year. This information is to be submitted before October, when CUSA distributes levies.
Odunayo said the approximately $2-per-student levy was reimbursed to student accounts last year due to requirements that were not being met, including a lack of financial accountability.
“We always operate under the policy with every group that receives funds from students should be financially accountable and should be very, very transparent in how they spend the funds,” Odunayo said, “We’ve made our position very, very clear.”
The collective was later told at a meeting with the Board of Governors that they were underperforming as an organization, according to Lefebvre.
CUSA originally asked the Carleton Food Collective for a statement of financial position in September 2013. The document the group subsequently provided was not a statement of financial position, which must be completed by an auditor, said Odunayo.
“We complied with their demands,” Lefebvre said. “Then the more demands we met, the more demands there were.”
The new statement of financial position was recently completed by independent bank auditor Collins Barrow. The collective provided Barrow with a record of expenses which included original documentations, and a description of how expense decisions are made, according to Lefebvre.
“Mr. Barrow was satisfied and gave us a full approval for the statement of financial position,” Lefebvre said, adding that the Garden Spot is in the process of bringing it forward to CUSA along with the list of planned events and services.
“I’m looking forward to them submitting their documents. I think that their service could be very important if executed the right way,” Odunayo said.
“Our communication is probably not the greatest, but we’re trying to move past that,” Lefebvre said of the collective’s interaction with CUSA since its levy was revoked in 2012, and the process of having it reinstated began.
“Revoking the levy embodied a breach of legal conditions that were initially agreed upon,” he said, referring to the fact that levies taken from student accounts are voted on by students in referendums.
“There’s a lot of legal tensions,” Lefebvre said, adding that the collective would likely take legal action in the event that their levy was not reinstated.
The collective-operated G-Spot no longer has an on-campus kitchen as it did in previous years. In January 2014, it received access to a kitchen located in the Glebe where they cook and transport food, according to Lefebvre.
“The reason we are operating today is mainly due to the carefully planned savings from previous years,” he said.
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