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A look at Campus Conservatives in Manitoba
Nov. 5 was another student Day of Action in Manitoba. This one was important because it linked issues facing students directly to broader societal concerns with the Target Poverty campaign, as well as linking up the organizations representing students with a broad cross-section of anti-poverty activists and civil society organizations in Manitoba. It’s a new tactic, and it really opens the door to building broad coalitions of activists, student unions, and other civil society organizations to confront the neoliberal policies which have affected us all over the past couple decades. I would say that it was moderate success, in that new ground was broken and new spaces for resistance were opened up for people from diverse political backgrounds to unite and fight for a better world.
But, the latest Day of Action also featured the sorry spectacle of Hugh McFadyen and the University of Manitoba Campus Conservatives “teaming up”, presumably against students rallying against poverty. Or, as the Campus Conservatives called them on their website, a “army of pinkos”. Hey guys, 1952 called, and they want their political epithets back. One wonders if these Campus Conservatives got that line from Hugh himself, given his accusations of communism against the NDP in front of the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce.
The entire episode was a sad exercise in self-promotion for both a desperate and ineffective politician as well as a student group made up of Tory hacks. The messaging on the Campus Conservative website sounds like an opening shot in a campaign against student unions and anti-poverty activists. As for Hugh, the only paper with so little journalistic integrity as to take his little meeting seriously was the notoriously far-right Winnipeg Sun.
Hugh McFadyen ignoring the elected representatives of students and cherry-picking which few students he wants to talk to is an insult to all students. It shows that he is not interested in talking to students or their elected representatives, just a few carefully vetted conservative hacks. Of course, it is no surprise that someone with such little support among students would want to carefully choose which students he wants to use as media props seeing as he was heckled and chased off campus during the 2007 election.
Of course, the most ironic thing in all of this is that on this issue, the government and the opposition are practically indistinguishable on the issue. McFadyen is complaining about a tuition freeze which no longer exists. McFadyen’s bullshit line borrowed from the liked of Bob Rae and Alex Usher about the tuition freeze “subsidizing millionaires” is the same bullshit line I heard from a prominent NDP activist upset with the fact that student unions weren’t rolling over at the insistence of the NDP at a recent conference about “only helping students from Tuxedo”. Hugh thinking all students are “millionaires” is an indicator of just how out of touch the supposedly youthful Tory leader is. McFadyen putting out a press release angry at the government for agreeing with them on tuition fees while students outside are rallying against poverty only serves to underline the incompetence of whoever is running the show at the Manitoba PC Party and gives an insight as to why Hugh failed to pick up any seats in 2007.
The announcement on the Campus Conservative website closes with:
More importantly, students are taking notice. Slowly but surely, students are waking up to the fact that a tuition freeze comes at a great cost. They are realizing that lofty goals such as eliminating poverty are not, and should not, be the mandate of their elected student government.
Thank you to everyone who attended. There is much more work to be done - but we are up to the challenge.”
Now, is it just me or does that sound like they have plans to try to take over the University of Manitoba Students’ Union?
So, let us look at these tiny tories a little closer. When the story of the secret Conservative training sessions was first broken by the Ryerson Free Press, it mentioned that they were held in a variety of cities, including Winnipeg. Now, if I were a Conservative Party activist and I wanted to target a student union in Manitoba, UMSU would be the logical choice. It is the most powerful student union in the province (apologies to my friends at the U of W), it contains a large portion of CFS-Manitoba membership, and it has a history of right-wing governance typified by former UMSU President Steven Fletcher.
So, I decided to do a little investigation. By which I mean I decided to take a look at the membership list for the facebook page of the University of Manitoba Campus Conservatives. Members include:
Pierce Cairns, 2008 UMSU Presidential candidate (Regressive Conservative) Adam Cousins, 2009 UMSU Presidential candidate (Campus Change) Young Jung, 2009 UMSU VP Student Services candidate (Campus Change) Stefan Paszlack, Campaign Manager, Campus Change
Those who were around campus in 2008 might remember that the Regressive Conservative slate ran an openly right-wing campaign, reminiscent of the Fletcher days. They were rewarded with a third place finish with less than 10% of the vote. With Campus Change, on the other hand, they seem to have learned their lesson and tried to run a more centrist campaign. Some unknown persons also produced and distributed around the parking lots unapproved flyers making accusations against rival candidates from the Be The Difference slate. These flyers were clearly beyond the budget of the campaign teams, leading one to wonder who paid for them. Despite all of this, they were still defeated handily, winning less than 20% of the vote. All this makes one wonder to what extent Campus Change was supported by the Conservative Party, as well as what the Campus Conservatives will try next.
Another member of this facebook group is MP Peter Braid, who you might remember from a certain Ryerson Free Press article, delivering these Conservative training sessions in Waterloo. Other politicians include my MP, Shelley Glover, former UMSU President and now Minister of State for Democratic Reform Steven Fletcher (the irony is abundant to anyone with knowledge of Fletcher’s reign at UMSU), and Rob Anders, a professional heckler turned MP who is best known for being the only MP to vote against honorary citizenship for Nelson Mandela.
This little group also includes a smattering of writers for our campus paper, The Manitoban, as well as Joey Coleman, Canada’s self-proclaimed “top student blogger”. Coleman formerly worked for Macleans in the education section, a media outlet leading the charge against the CFS, and now blogs at globecampus.ca. The composition of student and corporate media is of concern to students because whether it is campaigns for more neoliberal education policies or against the CFS, these campaigns tend to be very media-driven. Macleans is practically the national headquarters for the movement against the CFS, and it was corporate media along with the business community which pushed the government to lift the tuition freeze in Manitoba.
As students, we need to be constantly vigilant about Conservative attacks on and infiltration of our student unions. Not only are student unions a crucial voice of students in the neoliberal era which should not be co-opted by right-wing forces pushing anti-student policies, but they are also one of the few mass membership civil society organizations left which is willing to build coalitions and take stances against the dominant political forces for a better world. Right now, we need people in student unions who are able to check their political affiliations at the door and focus on fighting for students, not Tory hacks who want to neuter or co-opt student organizations in order to advance the anti-student agendas of the mother party.
For more information on conservative plotting across the country, please visit Campus Conservative Watch
Brian Latour is a student, activist, and student activist living in Winnipeg. Read more by Brian Latour.
Could you explain how journalists monitoring Facebook groups amounts to their involvement in partisan politics?
By your observation, signing up for email mailing lists constitutes a partisan act.
#1. Posted by Joey Coleman in Hamilton, Ontario on November 15th 2009 at 10:43pm
How about attacking what these groups are actually pushing for? Broadly and repeatedly accusing anyone who identifies as a conservative as harbouring an “anti-student agenda” doesn’t really do much except make you look petty.
#2. Posted by steph on November 16th 2009 at 8:01am
steph, myself and people smarter than me have written before on the issue regarding why this Rae Report crap is anti-student bullshit, I just didn’t feel like rewriting old articles or going off topic when the point of this article was about the recent behaviour of this student group. I would also say that pretending to represent students and acting as media props for a Tory leader who is spewing this garbage is extremely disrespectful to students. As I have a bit of experience with student groups, I also believe that it is against student group policies at the U of M as well.
Joey, given the content of the Manitoban over the past few years, I suspect that this isn’t just for monitoring purposes. Also it is worth noting that none of these journalists are members of the U of M NDP facebook group. I think it is important to note that the media is often not neutral and has an agenda instead of always buying into a myth of media neutrality, and that agenda should be examined once in a while.
#3. Posted by Brian in Winnipeg on November 16th 2009 at 10:09am