CFS Expose published!
The attached document and executive summary were written by Titus Gregory. The KSA neither endorses or affirms any facts contained therein, but believes that the document represents fair journalistic comment concerning the Canadian Federation of Students, and that it encourages continued discussion and debate on the important issue of the future of student politics in Canada.
* Executive Summary *
Although the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) has been the subject of a great deal of criticism in recent years, few have sought to gain a detailed understanding of the organization and understand how it functions in practice. At present, many students are attempting to leave the organization, but most of these attempts have been blocked through various legal maneuverings. This paper is partly an organizational analysis of the CFS, partly a political argument, and partly an exposé.
Drawing largely on a large number of primary and secondary source documents, this paper argues that the CFS is governed, de facto, as an oligarchy consisting of a relatively small group of staff and directors. Due to a number of structural factors, the proper relationships of accountability between staff and directors, and between the CFS and its member students’ unions, are partially inverted, turning the organization into a top-down structure whose corporate culture is essentially bureaucratically-oriented, rather than membership-oriented. As a result of this bureaucratic orientation, the CFS’s interest in maintaining and increasing its membership (and source of funds) eclipses its commitment to respecting democratic decision-making, local autonomy, and freedom of the speech and of the press.
Specifically, this paper argues:
• that the referendum processes provided in CFS bylaws violate all rational norms for the fair administration of referenda, through a biased Referendum Oversight Committee that perpetuates the systematic suppression of freedom of speech on campus during the months preceding an affiliation or disaffiliation referendum;
• that forces within the CFS appear to support the abolition of the referendum process entirely, in favour of legislation that would force all Canadian students to be members of the CFS;
• that the CFS is internally organized along democratic centralist lines, in which the “student movement” is conceived as a single, structured organization that is expected to adhere to centrally-determined decisions, rather than as a voluntary federation of autonomous students’ unions;
• that there is considerable evidence that senior CFS officials have interfered in local students’ union elections;
• that on a number of occasions, senior CFS officials have orchestrated a campaign of sabotage against “competing” student organizations, including the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, as well as a number of other organizations that have since collapsed in part due to this sabotage;
• that CFS general meetings are tightly controlled, deliberately cut off from the general membership, and manipulated by CFS and students’ union staff in order to ensure that desired results are achieved; and,
• that the corporate culture of the CFS is such that the relationship between CFS officers and staff is subverted, such that officers tend to see themselves as “bureaucrats-in-training” rather than as elected student representatives.
Furthermore, drawing on sociological analyses of democratic organizations, this paper argues that the oligarchical nature of the CFS is hardly surprising, but is rooted in the organization’s unique bureaucratic structures and the transient nature of its student membership.
By forcing an oppressive and alienating bureaucratic structure on students, the CFS is not only turning students away from political activism, but is in fact delegitimizing the very concept of a democratic collectivist organization. Over the long term, this could result in an increase in support for legislation to make individual membership in students’ unions voluntary and for “open shop” labour legislation, and in a decrease of support for public social programs such as public education and healthcare. The CFS’s structures therefore threaten the very political goals that the organization has committed itself to achieving.
Titus Gregory
