Republication: "The CFS is broken and can’t be fixed"

The following was first published in the March 17, 2008 edition of the SFU's student paper "The Peak." It is available online as part of a forty-eight page pdf, but I felt republishing it as its own text article would make it more accessible. This was written by three former CFS insiders who felt it was time to speak out about their experiences within the CFS. I have added my own emphasis in several sections.

I have also written four follow up posts based on this article:

1. Influencing internal politics (follow up post part 1)
2. Undemocratic structure (follow up post part 2)
3. General Meeting experience (follow up post part 3)
4. CFS's questionable finances (follow up post part 4)

The CFS is broken and can’t be fixed
by Jan Gunn, Karen McAthy, and Yasmin Irani, former CFS insiders who have chosen to speak out, years after their involvement.

The CFS is broken – badly - and it cannot be changed from the inside.

“Bad people don’t make a bad organization.” — that’s what we believed for a long time about the Canadian Federation of Students. The idea of a national student organization is a sound one. Of course we should coordinate a national lobbying strategy. Of course we should work in concert with students from all parts of Canada. The CFS, contrary to the opinions of some, cannot be reformed – it is too late.

What evidence do we have to make this claim? We are three women, now in our thirties, who are still (or once again) students. All of us have been, at one time or another, elected directors at the Simon Fraser Student Society, all of us have been involved in at least one other CFS affiliated college student association, and all of us have been members of the CFS BC executive committee. Our combined experience goes back to 1995. Simply put, we have been “CFS insiders.”

We don’t write this letter with clean hands either. We knowingly participated in manipulative, underhanded, and yes, sometimes corrupt dealings on behalf of the CFS within our own and other student unions. Our only excuse is youth and, at the time, a genuine belief in the purported goals of the CFS.

It is difficult to describe how profoundly bad the CFS can be without sounding like a conspiracy theorist. There is, however, a definite conspiracy within the CFS, and the fundamental problem begins with the long-serving staff. In fact, when we say CFS we mean mostly the staffers – certainly not the membership, or even most of the elected officers. The real objective of the CFS is to perpetuate security of employment for those staff. This is accomplished through maniacal and paranoid control over individual student unions (locals). The tool is progressive rhetoric combined with idealistic, itinerant activists. Young students who really want to make a change (ourselves included) are targeted and groomed for leadership positions within their Locals. Most are gone long before they begin to really feel the wrongness inherent in the CFS. Or they walk away in disgust.

The CFS doesn’t trust students to elect directors who will work constantly and at all times in the best interests of the CFS, so they regularly engage in campaigning for preferred candidates in internal student union elections. The CFS BC provincial office staff have participated in, directed and provided resources for students to get elected to their Boards. We were there. We saw it happen. We participated in those campaigns. CFS staff designed campaign posters, used CFS photocopiers, and utilized paid staff time to ensure preferred candidates were elected. As strong CFS supporters we were given unrestricted access to the BC office. On CFS BC computers we have seen election campaign materials from many student unions (including UVic and UBC) dating back several years.

Support for candidates in elections ensures loyalty, which is then exploited in a number of ways. The most heinous of these are in staff hirings. Jobs at student union are used as a reward for loyalty to the CFS. Again, we know this because we participated in such hirings. We have taken orders from CFS headquarters (clarify – national or provincial) about who to hire or not to hire. Very recently a CFS staffer mistakenly released a confidential document containing CFS plans for hirings at Douglas and other student unions (The Peak, issue 18, vol. 34, February 18, 2008). We were at CFS Provincial Office when one soon-to-be SFSS staffer was having her resume padded. The resume had to be padded because the candidate did not have the necessary skills or experience for the job. However, for the CFS, competence/experience is secondary to unfailing loyalty.

CFS-loyal staff at student unions (especially colleges where students come and go quickly) regularly use their positions to manipulate the elected directors into enacting a pro-CFS agenda. At the Douglas Students’ Union, for example, a CFS-loyal staffer managed to embed language relating to the CFS into their Collective Agreement – a legally binding contract - the effect of which is to force the student union into sending staffers to national and provincial CFS general meetings. CFS-loyal staff are then able to control the votes of their student union local. These are considered “safe” locals by the CFS. And for the record, the SFSS is NOT a “safe” local within the CFS and no staff with a primary loyalty to the CFS are on the SFSS payroll.

The national and provincial General Meetings are tightly controlled. During debates many of the strongest speakers in support of motions are CFS-loyal staff – and not the elected representatives. This lack of trust and paranoid desire to control goes much deeper, though. Each of us has been asked by CFS staff to spy on delegates with known or suspected anti-CFS views. We have been asked to report back about who the suspect person was talking to and what they were saying. New delegates are often roomed with CFS loyalists in order to control their sphere of influence. We have been those roommates.

Elections for national and provincial at-large CFS officers are precisely coordinated affairs at the General Meetings. The resumes of “chosen” candidates are often prepared by CFS staff. Candidates are assisted with their candidacy statements and prepped for debates by CFS staff. In our collective history (over 25 GMs between us) we have never seen a candidate elected who wasn’t the predetermined choice of the CFS. These newly elected national and provincial officers are in the best position to effect changes from the inside – they are after all, now the employer. However, they are also now making upwards of $30,000.00 a year, more money than they’ve probably ever made. And they owe it all to the CFS staff who got them elected in the first place. How can we then expect these people to effectively manage CFS staff?

We have chosen not to name individual staff or directors because the CFS is a very litigious organization. They regularly threaten lawsuits against student newspapers (as The Peak well knows) and vocal opponents (or a loyal follower does it by proxy). The SFSS is currently in receipt of a vaguely threatening letter from CFS lawyers relating to the upcoming defederation referendum. The CFS has almost inexplicably sought a court injunction to postpone the Kwantlen Students’ Association defederation referendum.

The CFS does not have a monopoly on solidarity. It is possible to work with other non-CFS student unions on unified campaigns and lobbying. There are many, many people who have worked with the CFS and left the organization because of its toxic culture. Bad people are making the organization bad. We encourage the current young supporters of the CFS to look up former CFS chairs, past SFSS directors, or people in progressive politics (not just the Young New Democrats) and have private conversations with them about the CFS. Our experience says you will discover a different, and rather negative take on how the CFS does business.