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Unholy Alliance? Conservatives and Ultra-leftists unite against CFS?
Recently, (as always) there has been much hullabaloo about the Canadian Federation of Students in the student media, as well as the usual suspects over at Macleans (here’s hoping the National Post somehow takes Macleans down with it). It’s mostly the usual stuff regarding disaffiliation campaigns, but with a twist this time. The interesting thing is that it doesn’t seem like it is just Tiny Tories anymore. A website titled Dear CFS appears to be run by a section of the Montreal radical left which is opposed to the CFS and actively working for disaffiliation campaigns. Signatoried to the letter include Yves Engler, author of The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy. As someone who identifies as an anarchist (anarcho-syndicalist if you want to get picky) and proudly carries my red card, yet is also active in my CFS-affiliated student union (to the point where I sometimes catch myself referring to it as “Local 103”), I find this interesting. I’m not sure I’m qualified to speak about all of their concerns because my experience with the student movement and the CFS is limited to the colonial backwater of Manitoba, but I think there are a few things which should be addressed here.
First, the CFS is far from perfect. Student union bureaucrats, especially at universities which have an active right, a history of right-wing governance, or a hostile student media, often fear conflict which could threaten the prospects of the re-election of a “progressive” slate and the self-preservation of any sort of official progressive politics at a university. They think that everyone is out to get them and to some extent they are right, as evidenced by the exposure of Tiny Tory plots over the years. However, this understandable paranoia can cause sections of the bureaucracy to start to become insular and bureaucratic, which results in some of the issues that we see in our student unions.
Also, despite what it says on my hoodie, there is a difference between the CFS and a student movement. The CFS is a bureaucratic (meant without any negative connotations) mass membership organization, somewhat analogous to a labour unions, with elected positions, an office, a big (by activist standards) budget, and a lobbying machine. While a student movement, where one has any presence, is a grassroots movement of students organizing in their spare time with every student an organizer – think SDS, or the Palestinian solidarity movement on campus. And as we all can figure out, a bureaucracy detached from a movement inevitably results in all sorts of issues. And perhaps the praxis of the CFS does need a lot of work. This is an organization that needs more organization at the bottom and to move a little from the liberal politics of awareness to the radical politics of disruption and fucking shit up.
All that said, there are things in this supposedly left critique which seriously need to be addressed.
The CFS has alienated real activists by highjacking our campaigns, stamping glossy brands on our hard work, and attracting bad press across the country. So here’s the truth. The real student movement can’t be put on a pin or a sticker, can’t be sold to us in a bus ad, and can’t hide behind superficial and obsolete rhetoric. The CFS has been a driving force behind the active and ongoing co-optation of legitimate social justice organizing for too long.
I haven’t really seen this happening. From “Drop Fees” to “No Means No” to “Target Poverty”, it seems as though rather than hijacking campaigns, the CFS is at the forefront of creating and pushing campaigns. I don’t think the CFS attracts bad press to external campaigns it signs on to, if anything, it grants them a bit of legitimacy, resources and muscle, and may generate some positive publicity or an increase in support for the issues on campus. In Manitoba, instead of attempting to co-opt social justice organizing, the CFS and local student unions are the only mass membership organizations really making an effort to mobilize their members or even lend some bureaucratic support for any sort of campaign these days (oh, the perils of having a “friendly government”). This might be different over in Montreal, but in my experience, I have seen the CFS take part in campaigns, but I have never seen them attempt to co-opt them.
sell shamelessly corporate CFS-Services contracts to our unions behind closed doors
As for CFS-Services, I don’t see any problem with student-run services, especially under the model they have with CFS-Services as a legally seperate branch of the CFS. In fact, I would say that students do benefit from some of these services, especially bulk buying and economies of scale. Incidentally, if I am not mistaken, all of the t-shirts ordered by the CFS or by individual student unions through their bulk buying programs are made by a worker co-op of single mothers in El Salvador – hardly the corporate behemoth that CFS-Services is portrayed as.
Moreover, we consider the adoption of progressive campaigns by the CFS deeply problematic regardless of whether or not we agree with their stance. The reason is simple: the CFS has a clear mandate to provide a voice for all students–on student issues–at the federal level, and no matter what we think about Palestine, copyright, gender, Cuba, abortion, or land claims it is unrepresentative to speak for all students on such divisive issues. Some of us have dedicated our lives to these causes, but it’s inappropriate for a federal lobby organization to adopt these campaigns while matters of urgent importance to all students (rising tuition, accessibility, corporate control of university bodies, declining subsidies) go completely untouched.”
Why should this be “deeply problematic”? First off, there are more to “student issues” than just the ones which are seen as directly affecting students. Attacks on students are just one part of something bigger, capital’s global offensive known as neoliberalism. We should be building coalitions and working in solidarity with people opposing an incredibly brutal intensification of the capitalist system around the world, not dismissing it as “unrepresentative”. The CFS is a civil society organization and a democratic organization of students. Why should it be prevented from taking stances on issues?
Also, copyright is a “student issue” (did I mention I hate this dichotomy of student issues and non-student issues?). We often come across it in our research, and the commodification of knowledge and culture has deep implications for any student doing any sort of research.
Furthermore, the CFS represents a broad cross-section of society – women, LGBT students, students of colour, aboriginal students, and international students from nations oppressed by global imperialism. It seems a little privileged to argue that the CFS, as their representative, should completely ignore their issues and refuse to take positions in support of their rights, especially given what myself and others have seen about the racist nature of our university.
It also seems awkward to complain about the CFS taking stances on issues such as gender when above the authors are complaining that “While quick to pay lip service to marginalized and disenfranchised communities, evidence of actual progress is hardly forthcoming.” The authors decry the CFS for not making progress, then complain about the CFS taking stands on these issues. Do they want this acutal progress or not?
It is also absurd to claim that it is inapproprate that the CFS is adopting campaigns such as Palestinian solidarity. First off, only the CFS-Ontario has a position on Palestine. I wish the national CFS, my provincial wing, or my local student union did, but they don’t (I wrote about this issue a few months ago). Also, CUPE Ontario and CUPW have voted to endorse the BDS movement against Israel – would it be logically consistent for these activists to also call for a decertification of these unions on that basis? Are they opposed to CUPE Ontario and CUPW’s endorsement of the BDS movement as well? Also, as someone who has a bit of experience in the Palestinian solidarity movement, I was under the impression that one of the goals of the BDS movement was to get large organizations to sign on and use their political and economic clout to end apartheid in Israel. It seems absurd to me that any Palestinian solidarity activist would oppose a civil society organization representing hundreds of thousands of students signing on to a BDS campaign. If anything, this only advances the cause and should make genuine Palestinian solidarity activists happy.
Finally, to address the notion that these “matters of urgent importance to all students” are going untouched, that is flat out wrong. It is the absolute height of absurdity to claim that the tuition issue has gone untouched when it is pretty much the biggest thing the CFS has done last year, and the CFS has been routinely and unfairly criticized for focusing too much on tuition. Has the writer of this document ever seen this?
Some people may say that any “other” issues should be ignored until such time as the CFS has won on all the “core student issues”, but when you are a large civil society organization like a student union or a labour union, solidarity and coalition building is not something you maybe get around to at some point when everything is peachy, it is something that you make time for. If we all decided to stop doing solidarity work until we’ve sorted out our own issues, no solidarity work would ever get done.
All in all, the CFS is far from perfect and I am sympathetic to genuine left critiques of the organization. And I am very intrigued by radical student federations such as ASSÈ in Quebec. But all that aside, I think we’re better off with the CFS than without. If you’re going to convince me that opposition to the CFS is a left position, you’re going to need a lot more than recycled Tiny Tory talking points and a rejection of any sort of solidarity campaigns.
Brian Latour is a student, activist, and student activist living in Winnipeg. Read more by Brian Latour.
Excellent article, Brian. If the Tory/Right campaign to undermine and destroy the CFS is successful - with the help of unwitting ‘left’ists - the day after, genuine student activists will wait up with a terrible hangover and realize that they must begin again to build a national student organization to fight for their rights to accessibility, student employment, etc., etc.
This is precisely what happened in 1969 when the Canadian Union of Students (CUS) was destroyed… it took over three years of hard work before the National Union of Students (NUS - which later changed its name to CFS) was established.
To paraphrase Marx (from the 18th Brumaire), ‘History always appears twice; the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’
#1. Posted by Miguel Figueroa in Toronto on October 30th 2009 at 10:21am
Brian—this is a thoughtful and respectful article, perhaps one of the most so that I’ve read about the letter so far. Expect a half-decent reply; I feel like a bit of clarity on my part would address a big chunk of your concerns.
pax—
lex
#2. Posted by Lex on October 30th 2009 at 11:02am
It seems hard to believe that a leftist like Yves Engler would sign such a letter. Could he really have read it first?
I agree with Brian Latour’s rebuttal of the letter, in general terms. But it is, frankly, absurd to refer to anything in the ‘open letter’ as “ultra-leftist.” It is, on the contrary, rigorously rightist or, at best, liberal.
What does it even mean to say that “gender” and “abortion” (to cite only two of a series of ridiculous examples) are not “student issues”? I really have no idea what that means. I know one thing, though: It is not an argument that a leftist, much less an ultra-leftist, could ever take seriously.
Steve.
#3. Posted by Steve D'Arcy in London, ON on October 31st 2009 at 12:15am
Yeah, I understand your point Steve, but just to be clear, I wasn’t referring to the letter itself as leftist or ultra-leftist, just the writers. I don’t really like the term “ultra-leftist”, but I saw it on the article on campusconservativewatch.ca and figured it might be the best description of the authors. I didn’t really want to go the route of challenging people’s left cred, and wanted to focus on the letter itself, which I agree with you, seems mostly either liberal or rightist.
Also, I suck at coming up with titles and it was late at night.
#4. Posted by Brian Latour in Winnipeg on October 31st 2009 at 12:45am
To respond, I am not involved in the campaign to defederate from the CFS and I should have read the letter more closely when I signed my name. I am removed from the student movement and was just trying to support the people leading the campaign at concordia.
It is an unfair attack, probably coming from CFS pork chopers, that the campaign against the CFS is coming from the right. Quite the contrary.
The paragraph about not taking positions on political matters I completely disagree with [it was not in the first version I read because of a glitch with my Hotmail]. I agree with part of the Spirit of that paragraph, however. The CFS national often hides behind nice-sounding resolutions on paper when criticized for not doing what they should be mostly doing: mobilizing student power. That paragraph should be rewritten in way that makes that clear.
Much more importantly, is the issue at hand and the role of the CFS in student politics. Unfortunately, my experience with the CFS national, including going to one or two conventions as an elected representative, is that it is a horribly undemocratic and corrupt institution [that’s not to say there aren’t many good people doing lots of good work through CFS channels locally].
The CFS national is of course a large institution that cannot be expected to only represent the most radical voices of the student movement. It can however, be expected not to undermine the most active sections of the student movement. In my experience, that is exactly what the Ottawa office is done, repeatedly. I was active with CFS for many years and the national office repeatedly tried to undermine the great work that people were doing [Québec city protests, anti-FTAA protests over the next years and a number of tuition related initiatives]. They didn’t want us have anything to do with ASSEE, the more active sector of Québec student movement. They wanted more services and to work with FEUQ, the more bureaucratic component of Québec student movement [they thought that if they had an alliance with FEUQ and that if we promoted our services the McGill undergrads would join the CFS and boost membership, which is what they seem to care about above all else].
All this was taking place while concordia, CFS Québec and the Québec student movement more generally was by far the most active and successful sector of the Canadian student movement. instead of using this great organizing work being done as an example for the rest of the student movement they work to quash it.
#5. Posted by Yves engler in montreal on October 31st 2009 at 5:17pm
Part two. The most egregious example of the national sabotaging progressive activism that I familiar with was an election after a year when my partner was the CFS Québec vice chair/chair. The national, particularly President George soule [spelling], was repeatedly working to undermine the active sectors of the Québec CFS [with one of the CFS Québec employees]. George Soule was told weeks before the election that he was not wanted as chair of the election for the CFS Québec because he was seen as highly partisan. The morning of the election, the member of the CFS national who had committed to chairing the election, e-mail my partner telling her that she had an important meeting with a lawyer so she couldn’t come to chair the election and she would send George in her place.
George chaired the election, refuse to recognize the progressive counselors from the concordia student Union who represented the majority from the CSU [and therefore should have been in control of the CSU’s one vote among three on the CFS Québec]. He only recognize the more conservative executive members of the CSU [directly contravening the CFS Québec constitution], which gave the more conservative factions control over the election and they elected a conservative CFS Québec slate who did basically nothing that year [and onwards]. A few months after the election George was hired as the staff member at the CFS Québec—compensation for his shenanigans with the election.
A little bit later the elected CFS Québec worker [Brent Farrington], who was part of the right wing backlash at the concordia student Union [he was vice president and president in two different CSU’s] was at working at the national.
The fact that there is some back-and-forth between different positions within the CFS national and regional bureaucracies is not in itself a problem. The problem is the people they promote are not activists. Additionally, The the manipulating of regional elections, in some cases student council elections and the CFS national conventions is undemocratic and destructive of activism.
My personal feeling on the best case scenario for the CFS campaign is that a handful of universities pullout, which would put significant pressure on the current bureaucracy to reform the organization in a way that increases local economy, massively downgrade services as a priority and increases participation [genuine] at the national conventions. There is of course some serious utility in having a national student Federation. But that is not, despite what many at the CFS national seem to believe, the goal. The goal is a mobilize student movement that can have a real impact on the country’s political terrain, particularly with regards to tuition and other educational matters.
#6. Posted by Yves engler in mtl on October 31st 2009 at 5:18pm
Great article, Brian.
All I can say to Yves is: you signed a letter without reading it entirely, you belatedly claim you disagree with it after it’s been up for weeks without having your name removed, and now you come here—not to apologize—but to go on a tangent about how you don’t like certain individuals who work for the CFS.
I don’t really care. You don’t decertify your union because you don’t like the staffers. A real leftist works to challenge their opponents in any organization, not walk away from the fight. And if you don’t know how to do that, maybe it’s because you’re an ineffective organizer.
Your first step should have been to have your name removed from the open letter which is still up there. Your next step should have been a public apology for sabotaging the work of real leftists in the student movement who have worked tirelessly to have student unions and other sections of the CFS take on progressive positions like the Palestinian Right to Education campaign. Attacking their work doesn’t help anyone except the right.
Your personal experience with a few individuals is not a political critique of an organization. It is just sour grapes.
#7. Posted by Unionist in Toronto on November 1st 2009 at 9:34am
The problem is that certain activists in Montreal are using their experiences to made generalizations about the whole organization. The issues in Montreal are somewhat location-specific.
In Quebec, where only 3-5 student unions have ever been part of the Federation, the politics have been personality driven. Navigating where the CFS-Q should sit on a spectrum from radical (like ASSE) to more mainstream (like FEUQ) isn’t an issue that happens in the rest of Canada, where the CFS is the main organization and has more room to manoeuvre where members want.
Just reading Yves’ statement, we can see some people didn’t get along and it was these personality clashes - rather than any policy or political issues - that left people upset, bitter and divided. The Concordia Student Union is the largest CFS-Q member school, and the fractious local politics in that Union essentially set the direction for CFS-Q. So when you accuse the CFS of having flawed elections or bureaucracy, you’re mostly talking about the CSU leadership which always ends up - as the biggest union within the group in Quebec - essentially running CFS-Q.
It’s unfortunate, because outside this context, in every other city with CFS members, it is the student unions active in the Federation that are pushing the envelope and building progressive movements.
The left has to stop eating itself alive.
#8. Posted by Alex on November 1st 2009 at 12:04pm
The CFS is one of the only membership-based, fee collecting organisations left in Canada that actually attempts to mobilize its membership on issues.
The institutionalized labour movement has long since given up trying to organise general strikes, rallies or other large scale mobilizations (even petitions or postcards are starting to disappear!). They’ve for better or worse (id’ say worse) fallen into a system of contract negotiations and collective bargaining which frames every decision they make.
At the other end of the spectrum are less structured organisations such as OCAP, No One Is Illegal, CAIA and the BDS movement which are mainly organized by volunteers and rely on donations from the institutionalized left (unions, the CFS, etc) for funding. In the middle there are some groups like ACORN that bridge the gap, but they’re under similar right wing assault as the CFS now finds it in.
Is the CFS perfect; no. Is it one of the few organisations left in English Canada that tries to mobilize students on a large scale around issues such as tuition fees, student “aid”, and funding: yes.
It is ridiculous for a small group of leftists in Montreal to team-up with Conservatives (http://www.campuspc.ca/cfs-watch/) in Ontario to cripple the organisation just when the McGuinty government is reviewing its post-secondary education system and Mike Harris (http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/717084) is arguing for greater cuts to the system.
I don’t really care much for whatever crap is going on in the lunchrooms and cafes around Concordia and McGill, just stop trying to destroy one of the few organizations off the island of Montreal that is actually organising and trying to improve things for the average student.
#9. Posted by Dave in Toronto on November 1st 2009 at 12:32pm
The worst thing that could ever happen to tuition fees in Quebec is for the CFS to get involved.
Brian hit the nail on the head when he said that the CFS needs to “move a little from the liberal politics of awareness to the radical politics of disruption and fucking shit up.” Quebec tried to raise tuition fees $50 and students set police cars on fire. Frankly, there is nothing the CFS can teach Quebecois students about keeping tuition fees low, or any other social progress, for that matter.
Brian was also right in his conceit that no student-lead bureaucracy, or any organization really, can be ‘perfect’. It’s important to aknowledge that no organization is perfect, least of which the CFS.
However, there are certain lithmus tests which must be applied to any representative organization like the CFS, and the greatest of these is transparency. The CFS has none.
They don’t release their audits, and if they do 50% of the budget is under one non-descript line-item. They don’t return calls from the media, ever. They consistently interfere in student elections, without confirming or denying their involvement. They cover and obscure their governing documents, and any heavy union decisions are always brought to a 66% CFS-staffed committee.
As Brian’s language points out, the CFS and its allies are so quick to finger this ominous “right” as the source of all their failures when the reality is they fail because of their own incompentence, which is the direct result of institutional cronyism.
CFS-Services is the biggest scam known to man. The allegations of closed door negotiations are confirmed time and time again. Here at U of T we routinely get overbilled for health and dental ($400K last year, and it went up $10, again) which miraculously returns to our Union executives in the $390K “Insurance Administration Fee”. Because of it’s size, Toronto doesn’t really need help actualizing economies of scale, in fact we only subsidize the smaller schools.
CFS-O is so scared of losing its Toronto cash cow that our union carries an institutionalized debt of over $1 million resulting from the questionable referendum which brought us into the fold. The implication is simple: if UofT leaves the CFS, the debt will be called in. Does threatening unions with bankruptcy seem pro-student to you?
There is nothing democratic about the CFS and its student union muppets. The only thing they accomplish is finding a home for the failed phd students which make up their staff.
Cronyism For Sure.
Vive le Quebec Libre (de la CFS-Q)!
#10. Posted by french fry in Gitmo on November 1st 2009 at 1:28pm
Oh come on French Fry, do you really need to resort to ad hominem personal attacks? You can’t simultaneously suggest the Federation is too bureaucratic, and then insult their staff as “failed PhD students” - do they need doctoral degrees? And to be honest, in my time working with the group, I never encountered a staffer that fit that description. Maybe you did, but most were very sharp, very committed and very hard working. Even if you don’t like what they worked for, you really undermine yourself and inject bitterness into this debate by utilizing attacks like “cronyism” or calling the staffers “failed PhD students.”
I know there has been a big fracas over which documents to put online, but I don’t see the audited financial statements of CUPW or various political parties on the internet either. Not everything needs to go on a website for it to be “available.” They’re available in hard copy format in every student union office and at every national meeting. I think you feel there are bigger transparency issues, and I agree somewhat - it is hard for a large organization to get info down to 500,000 grassroots members, many of whom don’t care at all about seeing these files. But the specific examples you give simply aren’t unavailable; any member can get them.
At UToronto, I wonder if you knew who provided health insurance BEFORE the Federation’s provider. For over a decade, it was a small company called Cherian & Co. that charged hundreds of thousands more, and ended in a court case. Students collectively saved millions by switching. The insurance debate is not cut and dry, but I don’t think you have the evidence to support your claim that people are being ripped off.
In Quebec, the tuition freeze has ended. Students tried to set police cars on fire, and they were arrested, tear gassed and ignored. Fees keep going up. The Student Strike of 2005 that restored $103 million in cut grants was effective because FEUQ, ASSE, CFS all mobilized. Since then, CFS-Q has faced severe internal problems, and the biggest schools in FEUQ (McGill and Laval) left. What is the result? Tuition fees have gone up. International fees SKYROCKETED. Funding cuts. Threats of deregulation and privatization of programs like McGill’s MBA program. Essentially I am arguing that student unity matters and while the role of the CFS in a place like Quebec is more complicated, as a national pan-Canadian group, it’s the biggest vehicle we have and we should use it, not break it.
#11. Posted by Alex on November 1st 2009 at 1:52pm
Its funny that “french fry” is leveling accusations of folks not being accountable or not returning media calls, yet the poster hides behind a fake name here, on The Varsity, etc…
But even more bizarre is that normally “french fry” uses the pseudonym to decry activists at the University of Toronto - everyone from the students’ union to the Fight Fees 14. But now in this progressive forum he is advocating for cars to be set on fire?
#12. Posted by J in Toronto on November 1st 2009 at 3:50pm
CFS is a capitalist organization and the wal-mart of student unions, down to driving out small town home grown competition. They represent nothing leftist other than cute pamphlet NDP-ish speaking points. They are a corporate student marketing services group masquerading as a student lobby. They have absolutely no accountability, or transparency, and they will damned well keep it that way as the administration has forced out anyone daring to shake things up (see McGill SSMU) and dumped their failed cronies (Hi Margo Dunnet Shawn Phillip Hunstdale, who tried to pass himself off as Phillip in backwoods nowhere QC) in weaker places where they are unknown for the failures they are to try to keep the minions in line. They are utter fascist totalitarian dictators and any self-respecting so-called leftist against leaving this organization needs to make sure their leftism isn’t something they bought to go with their swell Kaffiyah scarf.
#13. Posted by btdtgotanexpensivetshirt in montreal on November 1st 2009 at 10:15pm
The CFS does not really belong in Quebec. I was working at the CSU during the federal elections. The CFS in Ottawa decided to “help” us mobilize for the elections by sending us thousands of report cards on the performance of the federal parties.
But the Bloc, the party with the majority of Quebec seats in parliament, was not on the report cards. It makes no sense to ignore the Bloc in Quebec, but these ROC-centric types in Ottawa can’t seem to figure that out. They just wasted all that paper and ink because their propaganda was completely useless in Quebec. We litterally could not use the report cards in Quebec (we would have looked ridiculous if we did).
The CFS-Q brought this problem up with Ottawa. Ottawa has not even apologized. They see no problem with this practice of ignoring the Bloc and they continue to produce useless propaganda for Quebec.
#14. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 2nd 2009 at 10:06am
Even if it is true that CFS “does not really belong in Quebec,” i.e., is incapable of functioning effectively in Quebec (a claim about which I take no position, because I don’t know enough of the relevant facts), it is still outrageous for people at Concordia to be collaborating with people at universities like Western to disaffiliate from CFS. And the fact that they give a “leftist” veneer to this kind of campaign adds insult to injury. For information about the anti-CFS campaign at Western, see this important article: http://orperhaps.blogspot.com/2009/11/whos-leading-attacks-against-canadian.html
Steve.
#15. Posted by Steve D'Arcy in London, ON on November 2nd 2009 at 11:06am
Politics does indeed produce strange bedfellows. The CFS leadership in Ottawa was very happy to work with the rightwing reactionaries who came to power by fear-mongering post-9/11 at Concordia. The rightwing leaders were promoted to positions of power at the CFS. Those same leaders are now clashing with the new leadership thrown up at the local level as the pendulum swings back to the left at Concordia.
The rightwing leadership at the CFS demands that local organizers break with the ASSE (which was the backbone of the 2005 revolt against the Charest government) and work instead with FEUQ (which does its best to run to the front of every demo and issue press releases taking credit for ASSE’s mobilizations).
So it is indeed ironic that the anti-CFS Quebec left finds itself in bed with some anti-CFS rightwing types in the ROC.
#16. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 2nd 2009 at 1:02pm
In summary of the above comment: I know you are but what am I?
#17. Posted by Unionist in Toronto on November 2nd 2009 at 2:01pm
This is obvious to anyone who is familiar with the structure of the CFS, but for the benefit of those who aren’t, I’ll explain.
By “very happy to work with”, Dave in Quebec City means that the CFS office recognized the results of a democratic student election at Concordia University, and didn’t ignore the elected representatives.
By “promoted”, Dave in Quebec City means that the member student unions of the Federation elected individuals he disliked to positions of leadership in the CFS.
What was the Federation supposed to do? Ignore the results of the Concordia student union election? Ignore the results of the vote at the CFS meeting?
Recognizing election results is completely different from who you choose to work with as a political ally.
It isn’t just an unfortunate coincidence that you are working with campus Tories to mobilize a right-wing movement against student unionism. It is a political strategy you have chosen out of expediency and spite because it harms people you dislike.
#18. Posted by Unionist in Toronto on November 2nd 2009 at 4:20pm
No, that is not quite what I mean by those terms.
By “very happy to work with” I mean the CFS leadership stopped actively sabatoging the democratically elected leadership once it was no longer leftwing. They were not very happy to work with the leadership when it was leftwing, but they were very happy to work with it when it was rightwing. Think Bush with the democratically elected leadership of Venesuala or the democratically elected leadership of Canada. Night and day.
By “promote” I mean that the Concordia rightwing leadership was taken under the wing of the CFS bureaucracy in Ottawa and cultivated for positions of authority. Yes, they were elected to those positions, but anybody who has been to a CFS convention knows that these things are organized by a select group of insiders. Outsiders very rarely make it through the process.
#19. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 2nd 2009 at 5:26pm
Actually, come to think of it, not all the “promoted” rightwingers were elected at CFS conventions. I was thinking of Brent Farrington (former Amercian Students Association president at Concordia), but I forgot about Steven Rosenshein (former Hillel executive).
Steven Rosenshein was a “democratically elected student leader” except that he was elected as an independent student councilor without actually being an independent student. The rightwing students controlling the CSU exec let him sit on council because they “did not have access” to student records. But then he did something that pissed off the CSU president, and she miraculously was able to access those records and kicked him off council for falsely representing himself as an independent student. Apparently, this did not affect his status as a “democratically elected student leader” as far as the CFS was concerned. It promoted him by hiring him to its student services wing.
#20. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 2nd 2009 at 6:09pm
I was initially exited to see this article and participate in a genuine discussion about the student movement, the Canadian Federation of Students and the role of activists. I fear that it is just a space for people to showcase their long standing petty disputes.
I don’t know all of the goings-on in Quebec student unions from years ago, but the beef seems to be localised and personal in nature. What is the use of these obviously hyperbolic claims? What is this contributing to the discussion?
As the website says: “Please refrain from personal attacks, and keep the discourse intelligent and respectful.”
#21. Posted by J on November 2nd 2009 at 6:27pm
In my view, the history of the current CFS leadership as rightwingers at Concordia is relevant to the discussion. It is not a personal attack to point out the past actions of those leaders any more than it is a personal attack on Steven Harper when one points out his history in the Canadian Taxpayers Association.
#22. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 2nd 2009 at 7:02pm
The political views of the CFS leadership would be relevant if we were discussing who the left should support in the next CFS elections.
But we’re not. We’re discussing the very existence of the organization.
Within any democratic membership-based organization, you are bound to have elected representatives you disagree with. Many socialists and CD readers disagree with the politics of Buzz Hargrove. Does that mean we support decertification of CAW workplaces?
In my opinion, it’s more useful for us to discuss how we can organize against right-wing elements within our organizations and advance our politics.
As long as the CFS remains a democratic organization, there is potential to organize and push our agenda forward. So far I’ve seen no evidence that the CFS has overruled the democratic decisions of its member student unions, so I remain opposed to defederation.
#23. Posted by Unionist in Toronto on November 2nd 2009 at 7:45pm
Dave from Quebec City—you have made a significant amount of factual errors in your recounting of the history of the Concordia Student Union. And that is not including your penchant for the term rightwinger.
To name but one: Steven Rosenshein was never removed from council by Angelica Novoa. The president or any of the execs of the CSU do not have the power to ‘remove’ somebody from council. Only council can remove somebody from council.
And as to your criticism that CFS did not include the Bloc in their report cards—these report cards are sent out across the country. This poses a clear problem for any regional party, which the Bloc is. To counter this, CFS-Q made their own Montreal report card (all Quebec members are based in Montreal), to which the Bloc never returned any e-mails or phone-calls (the Bloc candidate in Ville Marie riding was also a non-contender to start with).
As has been repeated time and time again: why should the petty personal feuding of Montreal student leaders hijack the entire federation? To make matters more interesting, the current executive at Concordia is being trumpeted as new & shiny, and thus being left unscratched from this whole debate, despite the fact that have the same lineage as the past 6 years and that they were created and organized by former ‘rightwing’ executives.
There is so much anger in this world. Anger comes from love. It’s time for people to drop the gloves, see the common ground, and remember that solidarity is the foundation of any progressive movement.
#24. Posted by Will M. in Montreal on November 3rd 2009 at 8:32am
Yes. The CSU President brought to council the information that suddenly became available to her, and council removed Rosenshein (on her advice). How do these specifics matter? Does this change the substance of the argument? Why does the CFS consider this guy a “democratically elected student leader” worthy of being hired for an important position in Ottawa? He was kicked off council for passing himself off as an independent student. Does it really matter who kicked him off council?
And I would turn your question around. Why should clique in Ottawa be allowed to sabotage the mobilizing efforts of its Quebec membership?
Yes, the CFS-Q did its own report cards because Ottawa could not deal with the “problem” posed by the fact that a majority of Quebec seats were held by a Quebec nationalist party. And the CFS-Q continues to send its dues to Ottawa who tends to see all of the CFS-Q’s demands as “problems” that it cannot deal with. Ottawa spends the dues on glossy brochures that are useless for the CFS-Q and chooses the baddest of Quebec student movement apples to go along with its agenda.
I do acknowledge, however, that the current CSU is not without links to the rightwingers who came to power by fear-mongering post-9/11. Things are changing, but not fast enough. Breaking from Ottawa will cut off resources to the forces of reaction at Concordia and hopefully clear the way for healthier grassroots mobilizing like the 1999 Concordia student strike that was done despite the reformist direction being advocated by Ottawa.
#25. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 3rd 2009 at 4:23pm
Are you sure Rosenshein was removed by council? I’m not clear on it, but my memory on the matter may be foggy. I am, however, certain that he was never hired for a job in Ottawa. He was hired to be the organiser of the CFS-Q. There is a difference. I would also argue that his competencies on issues of accessibility to PSE (fighting for the right to international students working off campus, the replacement of MSF for a national system of grants, and helping the 07-08 CSU exec shut down (5 times total) a vote to increase international tuition fees by over $1,000) made him a suitable candidate.
How do you feel Ottawa is trying to sabotage the mobilizing efforts of its Quebec members? I am more surprised by the fact that some of the individuals associated to the defederation movement have not respected the principles of local sovereignty that they hold so close to their heart. Crashing other locals AGA and circulating defederation petitions on Ontario campuses are but two examples.
And as for the Bloc, the federation continuously meets with Bloc MPs to discuss issues of PSE and have succesfully gotten them to support several key principles (including calling the tories out on their regressive agenda vis-Ã -vis the streaming of research funding)... add to this that the CFS-Q is more then willing and happy to include the Bloc in CFS-Q material, I do not see how your argument has any merit.
Are you suggesting that Québec students, by the very nature of them being from Québec, should not be part of a pancanadian movement that seeks to bring an equal playing ground for all Canadians, regardless of their province of origin?
#26. Posted by Will M. on November 3rd 2009 at 6:28pm
Oh for the love of all that is left, anyone saying nice things about a proven electoral fraudster and pretty strongly alleged extortionist like Rosenshein instantly loses all credibility in this game. Someone should really go do their homework.
#27. Posted by btdtgotanexpensivetshirt on November 3rd 2009 at 6:51pm
Rosenshein and Farrington were part of Concordia’s successful strategy to bust the progressive Concordia Student Union and to install their hand-picked lackeys, turning the CSU into a company union. In fact, their slate was called Evolution, Not Revolution. These are the “democratically elected” leaders who we should trust to lead the student movement? All Harper would have to do is invite them to one gala and they’d STFU. They were dishonest scammers at Concordia and they continue the same BS at CFS. This is simply ripping-off students for their own gain.
BTW Rosenshein was kicked off of Council by the Judicial Board and purportedly reinstated at a meeting of Council that only his allies were convoked to. He then presumed to sit on Council until his ally Angelica got sick of him over the health plan scam and outed him publicly. He stopped showing up after that.
http://www.thelinknewspaper.ca/articles/1
http://www.thelinknewspaper.ca/articles/884
#28. Posted by Bill on November 3rd 2009 at 6:56pm
I know it sucks to not join in on the name-calling, but can someone please explain to me what all this interpersonal bickering has to do with the existence of the CFS?
So you’re saying these guys are right wing/corrupt/insert whatever. I have no idea of knowing one way or the other so let’s just say you’re right.
Can someone please explain to me how this demonstrates that students should leave the Federation? Can someone please explain why they are incapable of organizing against right-wingers within the Federation?
I’m sure there are also right-wing people in your local student union. Do you also campaign to have the university stop collecting student union dues, and shut down the organization?
Or do you get off your ass, stop posting on blogs, and organize?
#29. Posted by Unionist in Toronto on November 3rd 2009 at 7:07pm
Rosenshein, stop fee increases? I know he likes to take credit for that, but nobody at Concordia believes him. Oh, yes, you better believe he was removed from council. And there was much rejoicing.
Rosenshein is well known for having a budget meeting with the dean of students in the Winter Term of 2006 where fee increases were announced, and for failing to tell anybody about those announced increases. Months later the new fees and Rosenshein’s meeting with the dean were revealed, in the exam period when mobilizing students is next to impossible.
I had read that Rosenshein was a CFS employee, but I see that there was a correction made to that report at the end of this article
http://media.www.mcgilltribune.com/media/storage/paper234/news/2009/02/17/News/Bukhman.Alleges.Bribe-3633477.shtml
So Rosenshein was hired by the CFS-Q with a little help from George Soule when he came down from Ottawa and facilitated the rightwing (sorry, I know how much some people hate that word, but its the truth) takeover of the CFS-Q for a year.
And this is the first I have heard about the CFS being willing to include the Bloc in material. The CFS flat-out refused to put them in the report cards. Funny how people become more flexible when they are threatened with the loss of a few hundred thousand dollars in membership dues….
#30. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 3rd 2009 at 7:27pm
My question still stands.
#31. Posted by Unionist in Toronto on November 3rd 2009 at 7:37pm
“So you’re saying these guys are ... corrupt…so let’s just say you’re right.
Can someone please explain to me how this demonstrates that students should leave the Federation?”
Seems pretty self-explanatory.
#32. Posted by Bill on November 3rd 2009 at 9:08pm
So to clarify, you support decertification of CAW workplaces, too?
If not, please explain why you treat the two situations differently.
#33. Posted by Unionist in Toronto on November 4th 2009 at 12:33am
I used to think that the CFS was like a union. I thought its problem was that it had turned into a service-union (where membership paid dues just to get some kind of service) instead of an actively mobilizing union. The solution, I thought, was to get the highly bureaucratized beast to shed its holdings in various business interests, and to move towards mobilization (like getting Ontario Teachers to take their retirement fund out of the hands of the speculators that are managing it and to do something useful with it).
But the union metaphor does not hold for CFS. A union will at least sometimes seek a strike mandate from its members. The CFS never does. The CFS was given a strike mandate of sorts about 10 years ago at a convention. The member locals called for a Canada-wide strike. What we got was a “day of action.â€
The CFS is essentially a lobby organization that sometimes calls a demo or two to prove it has “grassroots.†That’s not so bad. Why defederate from that? Well, if I was a student at UWO, I wouldn’t be part of the campaign to get out. At UWO, frats organize volunteer scab labour to serve meals when service workers go on strike. To them, the CFS lobbies against their interests by calling for more public money in PSE.
But at a place like Concordia, the CFS is an organization that actually sabotages the work of the student union, which is a real union (it holds strike votes, goes on strike, negotiates for better conditions for its membership backed up by the threat of closing the university down). The bureaucratic maneuverings in the CFS-CFS-Q encourage the worse kind of Machiavellian politics and provide a conduit to power and privilege for the worst kind of anti-union bureaucrats. The few good people we have had in the CFS-Q office have always had to bang heads with Ottawa and they cannot last long before they get burned out. The people who last are the people who like to play the game (so say goodbye to organizing, working with ASSE, etc.).
Things look different from Ottawa, of course. They are worried about the bottom line. They want to keep the money flowing from both Concordia and Western. So they have to present themselves as a union to Concordia and a service-provider to Western and make alliances with the types at those two extremes that can work with them through back channels to keep the money flowing. And a huge amount of their resources must go towards paying CFS staff to fight referendum campaigns and, of course, the lawyers.
#34. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 4th 2009 at 6:44am
I fundamentally disagree with your hierarchical perspective.
Strikes do not happen from above. In both student or workers movements the rank-and-file or an executive will call for a vote at the *local* level. Members will then participate in a balloted vote or an AGM to call for a strike in the future. The period between the vote and the strike should be focused on outreach and mobilising for the strike. York University didn’t go on strike because someone passed a motion at CUPE National to strike.
#35. Posted by J in Toronto on November 4th 2009 at 9:39am
In Quebec, national student movements go on strike. That way, individual universities and Cegeps are not forced to go it alone. The last strike happened when ASSE member locals decided at their convention that their respective memberships were ready to go on strike. They decided that ASSE would call for a strike once a certain number of member locals got strike mandates at the local level. All the while the CFS’s favourite allies, the FEUQ, were saying that a strike was not in the cards. They encouraged lobbying, negotiations and waiting. But ASSE got its mandates, and the strike began with the Cegeps and Universities with mandates. Other schools (some ASSE and some FEUQ) joined in the movement. At a certain point, the FEUQ leadership changed its mind and took the lead in negotiations with the provincial government (for the strikers that had been organized by ASSE). The provincial government refused to negotiate with ASSE but the FEUQ refused to demand that the strike organizers be included in the negotiations.
The CFS could theoretically work to organize strikes on the same kind of model. Quebec locals have encouraged such organizing in the past, but Ottawa just gives us a friendly pat on the head and chuckles at us spunky Quebecers. I guess the idea that the CFS would organize such Canada-wide strike action is laughable. A nice idea, but the realities of completely de-mobilized CFS locals would not allow it. And the CFS does not know how to energize its member locals facilitate such action.
#36. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 4th 2009 at 10:22am
November 5 Day of Action Called at Critical Time
John Clarke
The November 5 day of action for a ‘poverty free Ontario,’ that has been called by the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), is taking place against a backdrop of major attacks on working class living standards and social gains. The day needs to become a rallying call for a serious resistance to these unfolding attempts to impose the burden of the economic crisis of capitalism on workers and the poor.
In calling this action, the CFS has raised the issue of the massive tuition costs that are faced by students and, very correctly, presented this debt burden as a factor that fuels poverty. They have also, however, chosen to go beyond the issues of their membership and have welcomed union and community participation, giving these allies an opportunity to present their grievances and demands as part of the overall mobilization.
The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), joined by other community organizations, will be marching through Toronto’s financial district on November 5. We will target the very capitalist institutions that have been bailed out at public expense and on whose behalf governments will now launch a massive round of austerity. Our March will advance demands for measures that poor communities will need to survive both economic downturn and ‘jobless recovery.’ We’ll be demanding decent jobs, income and housing. We’ll call for status for all immigrants and refugees and justice for First Nations people. Most of all, however, we will deliver a call to unions and community organizations to reject concessions and cutbacks and to fight any and all attempts to impose the burden of the crisis on working people.
A very short while ago, as this crisis took hold and major capitalist institutions began to fall apart, a decades long obsession with public debt and government deficits was instantly set aside. Literally trillions of dollars were suddenly made available to try and jumpstart the faltering system. A limited and fragile stability has now been created but we need to understand that the implications of this ‘recovery’ are dangerous in the extreme. Even prior to the financial collapse, Ontario’s industrial base was being eaten away. Last week’s decision by Ford to close its plant near St. Thomas, at the cost of thousands more jobs, is a reminder that the corporations will recover at our expense by rationalizing their operations, discarding a section of their workforce and trying to force major concessions out of those who remain. Even in their calculated optimism, economists and politicians acknowledge that high levels of unemployment will be a feature of the next period.
Continue reading: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/269.php#continue
#37. Posted by Steve in London, ON on November 4th 2009 at 11:22am
Very encouraging development John! Good to see the CFS is playing a more useful role in Ontario than it is in Quebec. Hope the action is a success.
#38. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 4th 2009 at 11:52am
I don’t just *hope* that an action will be good while letting others build it, sit back safely and type undermining platitudes over the internet.
I will be there with others from my classroom and thousands of people who would rather take part in resistance. This is why the CFS is under attack by the Torys. In times like the need for the left to learn how to distinguish real political differences from petty, personal grievances is more pronounced.
#39. Posted by J on November 4th 2009 at 12:32pm
Sorry, J. From here in Quebec City, hope is all I can really do for that Ontario action.
Doing my best to build where I am. That task will be easier once the CFS lets Quebec go from its iron grip. That has nothing to do with petty personal politics, but with real political differences.
#40. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 4th 2009 at 1:41pm
I don’t understand your assertion that the CFS has an iron grip on Québec. From my analysis of the last decade, I would argue that the greater issue with CFS-Q is that the fact that all their locals are in Montréal and from English institutions. One of the founding principles of the federation is to respect the sovereign right of Québec students/groups to organize independently (ie. not actively seek membership in institutions that are members of ASSÉ/FEUQ/FECQ).
With this, we must remember that education remains a provincial matter, and that therefore CFS-Q can often only play a supportive role / work in coalition with the larger provincial associations / federations.
Seeing as how the student movement in Québec has been exceptionally divided (especially since 2005) and the word ‘solidarity’ has left the vocabulary of many student leaders, it makes it increasingly difficult for CFS-Q to know its place & obtain its objectives.
ASSÉ & FEUQ need to figure their shit out, and anybody interested in destroying the national student movement need only look at the last several years in Québec to see the exceptionally damaging effect a divided student movement has on access to PSE.
I predict that things in Québec will continue to get worse and believe that some locals having a connection to the national student movement and hearing of the victories that are occurring in other provinces will be a crucial element to the eventual revival of the student movement in Québec.
#41. Posted by Phil on November 4th 2009 at 2:39pm
Divisions have created problems in Quebec, but Quebec is light years ahead of the ROC when it comes to student organizing, largely thanks to ASSE and its predecessors (the MDE and ANEQ). It is because of the student strikes organized by these groups that tuition fees are lower in Quebec than anywhere else in Canada.
CFS’s prejudices against ASSE and in favour of the FEUQ make it very hard for the CFS-Q to operate in Quebec. Also, the CFS-Q is looked upon as a mere “provincial component” by Ottawa which hampers its ability to work with other organizations. FEUQ leaders have refused to meet with CFS-Q leaders because they say it is not a national organization, like the CFS in Ottawa or the ASSE or the FEUQ itself. They prefer to meet with the real heads of Quebec’s anglophone student movement (in Ottawa), and CFS leaders encourage this approach.
The CFS-Q’s problems finding its place would be greatly reduced were it able to simply split off from Ottawa, but the CFS bylaws do not allow for this kind of separation, so defederation is the only option.
Quebecers would certainly like to hear about victories in the ROC but they don’t need to be members of the CFS to do that.
#42. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 4th 2009 at 3:04pm
I think Dave in Quebec City has some insightful analysis. He is correct that members of the Federation at a place like UWO have different interests than at Concordia. I still think there is a benefit in all of them collaborating. THe interests of Doctoral students in Engineering at McGill are different than Bachelors students in Women’s Studies at Concordia, yet they have worked together in the past, and could do so in the future. In fact, even the different constituent groups within the CSU are dramatically different (witness the John Molson School of Business v. the more leftists arts students), yet there is value in student groups working together.
I don’t know Steven Rosenshein or Brent Farrington at all, but the amount that he talks about them suggests to me that personalities have completely dominated the discourse around the Federation in Quebec, which is logical seeing as there is only a handful of member locals here and everything is more personal.
What I find remarkable is that Dave in Quebec City is able to applaud the CFS organizing going on in Ontario, and yet still participate in an active defederation campaign that seeks to weaken the organization. I have to disagree with his claim that Quebec is “light years ahead of the Rest of Canada” on student organizing; perhaps it once was but now it’s in disarray. Between FEUQ, ASSE and this new “Quebec Student Roundtable” there is no unity whatsoever, and we are sitting ducks.
Ultimately, Quebecers may wish they had more autonomy on student issues, but students at Concordia and UWO and UVic and Memorial all still get federal student loans and grants; their universities depend on federal student monies; international student rights on their campuses are regulated by the federal government; the federal taxes (or lack thereof) on our scholarships are also decided in Ottawa. We have an interest in lobbying the federal government together.
I don’t know enough to say the situation at Concordia is this or that; it seems messy. But I wonder what will happen next with a disintegrating student movement, and as a leftist, it should worry you too.
#43. Posted by Alex on November 5th 2009 at 8:51am
Quebec is not any more divided now than it has been in the past few decades. The divide between the FEUQ and the MDE in the 1990s was the same as the divide between the FEUQ and the ASSE and there were similar divisions further back in the past. And yet Quebecers have been able to organize nation-wide student strikes again and again. That is because of on-the-ground organizing by groups like the MDE and ASSE. When they organize, they bring to life a strike movement that sweeps along a lot of FEUQ locals, forcing the FEUQ leadership to finally join in.
It is unfortunate that the CFS in Ottawa is so friendly with the FEUQ (which has actually been a drag on these strike waves) and is so unfriendly with ASSE (to the point of sabotaging CFS-Q-ASSE relations).
People like Farrington and Rosenshein end up moving up the ranks in the CFS because they go along with the CFS-FEUQ bureaucratic approach to the detriment of actual organizing and mobilizing with ASSE. They play the game. It is not Farrington and Rosenshein as personalties that are the problem; it is the system they benefit from. That is one of the main reason leftists in Quebec want out of the CFS.
#44. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 5th 2009 at 11:48am
http://uppingtheanti.org/node/3018
#45. Posted by Dave in Quebec City on November 9th 2009 at 8:04am