The Martlet

Students vote no to CFS

The UVSS is disposing of its ties with the CFS after a recent referendum.

Megan Kamocki

UVic undergraduate students have voted for the UVic Students’ Society (UVSS) to sever ties with the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).

1,361 students voted “yes” to continued CFS membership and 3,255 students voted “no” in the referendum, which ran from March 29–31. UVSS Chairperson James Coccola, who sat on the Referendum Oversight Committee (ROC), notes that the results are preliminary and still need to be verified by the ROC.

Karina Sangha, who led the “No” campaign, says she’s “a little bit shocked” by the results.

“I know we all worked really hard but we were definitely outnumbered throughout the vast majority of the campaign,” she said. “The representatives of the “Yes” side were out in full force and had much larger numbers than we could ever achieve . . . we really spread the word through our networks and via word of mouth.”

Coccola says the referendum went “very smoothly,” despite a number of complaints against both sides.

“Both were guilty on several occasions of breaking the rules and both were given penalties for that,” he said.

Coccola anticipates that the next step will be the ROC submitting a motion at the next CFS Annual General Meeting (AGM) where the referendum results will be received by the meeting.

“That will signal the official end of the UVSS’ membership in the CFS,” he said.

Coccola doesn’t believe there will be any issues with the results at the AGM.

“At this point, the vote has happened under the University Act,” he said. “Students have a right to make sure that their voice is heard. They’ve held a referendum under the CFS bylaws, followed all the rules, and there’s absolutely no reason why it wouldn’t be recognized at the [AGM].”

Voter turnout for the referendum was about 30 per cent, up from about 18 per cent in the March UVSS elections. Sangha, who is currently a UVSS director-at-large, believes the high voter turnout is due in part to the fact that the referendum was a “simpler issue.”

“It was less political. It wasn’t people trying to sell themselves,” she said “It was more so just raising awareness about an important issue and I think people were very receptive to that. It was a very different kind of vote than what the campus sees very often.”

The road to referendum was a long one for the UVSS. In fall 2009, a group of students circulated a petition asking students whether or not they wanted to see a referendum on membership. The petition garnered 1,892 signatures and was followed by a counter-petition. The CFS deemed the original petition invalid because some students signed both the original petition and the counter petition. The issue was taken to the B.C. Supreme Court in January 2011, where Justice Malcolm Macaulay declared the original petition, submitted by UVSS member and current Director-at-Large Jose Barrios in October 2009, as valid.

Barrios says that although the process has been “very, very arduous,” having a referendum was a necessity.

“The [CFS] has rejected many attempts at internal reform. Rather than looking at the grievances from students, the CFS has modified its bylaws to make it harder to end ties with them,” he said in an email interview. “We need a new approach to national and provincial lobbying — an approach that welcomes constructive criticism and reform.”

Barrios says that the referendum was “just the beginning of the end.”

“Unfortunately, this process is far from over, the [CFS] is well known across the country for not recognizing democratic results,” he said. “We are certain the [CFS] will somehow fail to acknowledge the results of the referendum at UVic in hopes they can legally trap us into continued membership. We will be there to fight them when they do. The mandate of students couldn’t be more clear: UVic wants out.”

Sangha also believes the issue is far from settled. She too is anticipating a lawsuit, possibly over whether or not the referendum applies to the UVSS’ membership in the CFS’ provincial component, CFS-BC.

Coccola says that, in terms of the referendum, there is no distinction between the two.

“In my eyes and in many other people’s eyes, there is really no difference between CFS and CFS-BC,” he said. “In pervious referendums, there’s never been separate referendums for the provincial component and the national component. It would be in violation of CFS-BC’s bylaws to be part of one organization and not the other.”

The CFS did not respond to repeated requests for comment.