November 17, 2009 News

CFS supporters strike back

Open letter signed by 14 current or former CFS employees

by Justin GiovannettiTerrinne Friday

Less than a month after Concordia University’s petition to leave the Canadian Federation of Students was completed, students from across Canada – but none from Concordia – released open letter in support of the CFS.

A group, called “Progressive Students 4 CFS,” said that the current defederation drive at 13 universities across Canada could leave students with a “horrible hangover.” The group’s open letter also said that the anti-CFS campaign could lead to students becoming “incredibly vulnerable to the right’s agenda.”

“The CFS is the most vibrant democratic mass organization in Canada that I’ve ever seen or participated in,” said Rick Telfer, one of the letter’s signatories and the president of the Society of Graduate Students at the University of Western Ontario.

“If you ask me if I think [the CFS] is broken, I would say it’s a cut above every other organization I’ve ever seen as far as transparency and democratic decision making [goes],” he continued.

Both sides of the CFS debate have agreed on one thing: the organization is flawed.

“I really don’t put much merit in this letter at all,” said Dean Tester, the coordinator of the defederation petition at Carleton University.

Many of the signatories, Tester said, either have worked or currently work for the Canadian Federation of Students or one of their subsidiary organizations. Telfer was an active member of the CFS from 2001 to 2008, serving in various roles including a four-year stint as the Ontario national executive representative.

“This is not about left or right politics; the problems with the Canadian Federation of Students go across ideology,” claimed Tester. He said be believes the organization is not transparent and it is not accountable to its members.

Telfer argued that the defederation drive has an ulterior motive of dismantling the CFS, and that reforming from within was instead the best possible strategy.

“If you’ve got something that isn’t broken, don’t fix it. There is no such thing as a perfect organization. Improving it is the responsibility of its members,” said Telfer.

After proposing a reform package in early October, the CFS’ Quebec component received legal warnings, being told by the national office that they were no longer a part of the national organization.

Montreal-based activist and author Yves Engler entered the fray in October when he publicly supported Concordia defederation petition organizer Lex Gill. Engler had previously served two terms on the board of directors of the CFS’ Quebec component.

“The best thing to happen would not be that the whole CFS national [organization] disappears, but that five or six student unions pull out,” said Engler. “Not enough that the whole thing crumbles – it has 70 or 80 members – but enough that some serious soul-searching takes place within that bureaucracy.”