In the late hours of Sunday, March 9, U of T’s Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) received word that its petition for a referendum to decide its continued membership in the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) had been rejected. Monday would have been the first day of the campaign period for the referendum and GSU members in favour of defederation were working until the last minute preparing materials arguing their case. Though GSU members will not be able to vote on whether or not to continue the relationship with the CFS this year, I still believe that GSU’s affiliation with the Federation should be questioned and that our members deserve to know as much about this organization as possible.
On Tuesday, GSU members received a report from a third-party firm that assessed the petition. The report indicated that the petition had failed to meet the threshold of legitimate signatures to be considered valid. Around 500 signatures were excluded for subjective standards such as legibility and if the signature was considered “unique,” in addition to more objective standards such as if the signer was an enrolled graduate student. The third-party firm was picked by the CFS, and the standards used to judge the petition were provided by CFS. The Federation’s bylaws state that no less than 20 per cent of a union’s membership must sign the petition for it to be valid. In GSU’s case, 20 per cent is more than 3,000 individuals; the petition missed by less than two percentage points at most — one interpretation by the firm stated that it was less than one per cent.
The Federation is a very easy organization to join but a very difficult one to leave; bylaws stipulate very strict benchmarks for when a referendum is allowed to take place. In fact, after several defederation petitions were submitted in 2008 and 2009, instead of reflecting on why so many student unions wanted to leave, the CFS responded by doubling the number of signatures required to initiate a referendum and limiting the number of defederation votes for any union nationwide to two per term.
The CFS has also been engaged in litigation with an array of student unions that have submitted defederation petitions from British Columbia to Quebec. How much of the CFS’s budget goes towards these lawsuits is sought-after piece of information for student delegates that the CFS executive consistently declines to disclose. This refusal to disclose basic information and dismissal of legitimate concerns from membership is a pattern of behaviour exhibited by the CFS and belies their claims of fostering a democratic space for students.
Solid information about the Federation’s budget is hard to come by, particularly the portion of the organization known as CFS-Services. Even though fees paid by the student unions are the primary source of funding for CFS, students have long criticized the CFS for vague, unclear budget lines and a refusal to provide more information at CFS Annual General Meetings (AGMs). Students have attempted to pass motions at CFS AGMs to open up the budget to membership, but these motions have never succeeded. A student delegate made one such attempt in June 2013, and was able to discover the salary of the elected chairperson but no other employee, nor were they able to get consistent metrics on how many people are employed by CFS-Services.
Though the effort to defederate from the CFS may seem like an uphill battle, if our union can succeed it would be a great victory for them and also for the students that come after. GSU members pay $200,000 in student fees per year to the CFS that could be saved or potentially reallocated to programs benefiting graduate students at U of T. Defederating would give gsu members the opportunity to operate more independently or to align with other students around the country in a more democratic and transparent system than what the GSU currently experiences under the CFS.
GSU only received the report rejecting the petition on Tuesday, and union members, who represent a diverse range of opinions, are still interpreting the information. As such, the union has not yet voted on their next steps. Though graduate students at U of T will not be able to vote on our affiliation this year, I encourage GSU members and all students at U of T to familiarize themselves with how the Federation operates and develop an informed opinion. Hopefully we will have the opportunity to discuss and even vote on affiliation again in the future. Regardless, this debate is far from over.
Hilary Barlow is a representative on the University of Toronto’s Graduate Students’ Union. She graduated from U of T in 2011 as a history major.
With files from Ashleigh Ingle
