It’s a relatively simple process for a students’ union to join the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), an organization dedicated to lobbying the government for lower tuition and providing student services.
First, the students’ union holds a referendum with the student body. Then, an application is submitted to the CFS which is voted on at the Annual General Meeting (AGM). Once a submission is accepted, the union pays its annual fees—which vary from school to school—to maintain its membership. The written application is “considered as a binding contract,” per the CFS bylaws.
However, defederating from the CFS is a different process entirely. Students’ unions must comply with extensive bylaws or their decertification will be discounted. The longer the process takes, the longer students continue paying fees.
Defederation at Carleton
The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) is the latest organization in a bid to defederate.
CUSA became Local 1 of the federation after the CFS’ founding conference was held at Carleton in October 1981, according to the CFS website. To terminate their membership, Local 1 must defederate from both CFS-National (CFSN) and the provincial chapter, CFS-Ontario (CFSO).
But, the exact conditions surrounding defederation of the CFSN appear to be unclear.
According to CUSA president Zameer Masjede, students’ unions need to collect signatures from 15 per cent of the undergraduate student body and deliver the petition to the CFS. However, Nour Alideeb, the CFSO spokesperson, said only 10 per cent of signatures are required. Meanwhile, the CFS’ bylaws state “a petition calling for a vote on decertification shall be signed by no less than twenty percent [of the student body].”
Masjedee said he’s hoping to double the number of signatures to 30 per cent, or 7,500 signatures, so the petition doesn’t have any trouble passing. He also said he doesn’t think the referendum should be required at all.
“If there are mechanisms in place right now to prevent the vote from happening, that isn’t democracy,” he said.
After the signatures are collected, Masjedee said the CFS must then verify the signatures are from eligible students—students still enrolled at Carleton—before CUSA can hold a referendum on leaving. He said 10 per cent of the student body must vote “yes” for the referendum to pass.
In 2016-17, Carleton had 25,530 undergraduate students, meaning about 2,550 students would need to vote “yes” in the referendum for CUSA to be eligible to defederate.
Alideeb said the referendum can’t pass until the petition is verified and the union has paid any owing fees.
“It’s a referendum vote that follows the bylaws of the organization with the simple majority result whether in favour or not,” she said.
Last year, then-CUSA president Fahd Alhattab told the Charlatan that CUSA had been withholding membership fees from the CFS for the past two years due to the federation not releasing their audits. This amounted to about $380,000 in student fees per year, Alhattab said.
But, Masjedee said all owing fees have been “paid up.”
Alideeb added the decertification process is extensive because student representatives shouldn’t be able to make the decision for the entire undergraduate population, which is about 25,000 students at Carleton.
“We are a membership driven organization, so at the end of the day, it’s always the consent and the will of the membership,” she said. “I know that it can be difficult for students’ unions . . . but that’s the reason that it happens, so that certain individuals can’t make the decision on behalf of everyone.”
Difficulties with defederation
Mathias Memmel, president of the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU), said the defederation process is “as difficult as possible” and changes every time a union successfully leaves. He said the UTSU is supporting a member-based decertification campaign called You Decide UofT, which began in September 2016.
“The [You Decide] campaign has consistently followed the CFS bylaws, so we’re hopeful that the CFS will accept the petitions,” Memmel said in an email. “However, the CFS has rejected petitions arbitrarily in the past, so there’s no guarantee.”
While CUSA and the UTSU collect signatures, the CFS bylaws also allow the federation to run a counter-petition, which can discount any signatures found on both petitions.
Kevin Mason, a fourth-year public affairs and policy management student at Carleton, said the bylaw is another example of the undemocratic decertification process.
“There’s another hidden regulation that makes you think ‘Huh, the more you know about this organization, the more you’re kind of like, this is really fishy,’ ” he said.
At this point, Alideeb said the CFSO has no plans to hold a counter-petition and would rather focus on educating Carleton students about the CFS.
“Students are really happy to hear about what the federation does,” she said. “So, I think it’s worth investing energy in that and showing people what we are, as opposed to kind of being combative, because I don’t think that’s ever a good thing.”
Eric Hitsman, the president of Carleton’s Graduate Students’ Association (GSA), said the decertification process is necessary to keep too many schools from leaving at a time and bankrupting the CFS.
“To me, it makes sense that there would be some kind of protection for the people involved, who still want to be involved,” Hitsman said.
He also said the federation’s AGMs provide an opportunity to make the decertification process clearer, such as recent legislation that allows an equal number of schools to federate and defederate at the same time.
But, Gavin Resch, CUSA’s vice-president (finance), said that the UTSU tried to pass several motions to make the decertification process easier at the AGM in June 2017, and none succeeded.
“It was kind of a mockery of Robert’s Rules [parliamentary code for procedure]. I just didn’t enjoy it . . . how are you supposed to create change there?” he said.
Resch said it’s likely that student unions supportive of the CFS are more likely to have their motions moved at meetings.
At the most recent AGM in November, Masjedee said motions that would have made positive changes to the federation were omitted from the schedule due to time constraints. This is typical for AGMs, he said.
“I think it’s repetitive,” he continued. “No one is surprised by the lack of work that gets done.”
He also said that anti-CFS students’ unions are treated differently at AGMs.
“We’re not really welcome there . . . especially when we’re launching our ‘CU Later CFS’ campaign,” he said. “I’d like to say that things are improving, but it’s hard to when they really are not.”
CUSA launched their ‘CU Later CFS’ campaign in September 2017, to advertise to students why they are no longer in need of the CFS’ services. Every undergraduate student at Carleton pays $16.25 per year in membership fees, according to Resch. He said annual CFS fees from Local 1 total nearly $400,000.
As the campaign continues, Mason said he thinks CUSA can avoid court time with the CFS.
“CUSA is going to be very careful during the campaign, regarding the legality of it, because the CFS is notorious for putting small little nit-picky regulations in around the election, and then they try and sue the students’ union after the referendum to say that it wasn’t valid,” he said.
He said in previous defederation processes, the CFS has discounted petitions due to minor bylaw concerns.
Defederation at other universities
According to a Maclean’s article, the University of Guelph’s Central Students’ Association (CSA) had their 2010 petition disqualified because a process server—an individual who delivers legal documents—delivered the petition directly to the CFS, rather than sending it via registered mail. In the article, the CFS said it was probable that a janitor threw the petition out.
The dispute didn’t end there. The CSA and the CFS spent years in court, battling over decertification until 2013, when a new CSA executive slate chose to settle the lawsuit and continue membership with the national union. This meant the CFS membership fees for the last few years were outstanding.
However, the university believed the CSA had failed to consult with students and held its own referendum, in which 70 per cent of students voted to leave the federation. The CFS found the administration’s actions “paternalistic,” according to the article. Together, the CFS and CSA began a lawsuit against the university for the payments, which is still ongoing.
Alastair Summerlee, Carleton’s interim president and the former president and vice-chancellor at the University of Guelph during the time of the lawsuit, denied the CFS’ of claims of administration involvement.
“I was absolutely not involved, and it would have been very inappropriate for me to have been involved,” Summerlee said.
He said he has no opinion on the CFS or CUSA’s efforts to defederate, adding that it’s up to students to decide who they want to represent them.
The CSA represents just one of many students’ unions that were denied defederation over claims that the CFS bylaws weren’t followed.
According to articles from the National Post, student unions at Concordia University, Cape Breton University, McGill University, Sudbury’s Laurentian University, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Victoria have also spent time in court with the CFS.
Memmel said he’s unsure of what will happen at his university.
“We just haven’t reached the stage at which litigation normally occurs. The CFS doesn’t usually prevent petitions from being submitted,” he said. “We’ll see what happens when the petitions are delivered.”
Mason said CUSA is working with a lawyer, and added that he believes the union will be able to defederate.
If CUSA’s attempt fails, they must wait a minimum of 60 months before they can hold a decertification vote again, as per the CFS bylaws.
Currently, CUSA is not releasing the number of signatures they have collected, but Masjedee said they are on track to deliver the petition to the CFS on April 30.
Photo by Meagan Casalino
