All Your Conference Are Belong To Us

In previous posts, I noted how the Canadian Congress of Student Associations and it's various sub-conferences (SuperCon, MoneyCon, and Canadian Academic Roundtable) had been incorporated as Canadian not-for-profit corporations - with a leadership that just coincidentally happened to consist mostly of Canadian Federation of Students executives. All this was thanks to the good people working for the Government of Canada, who had published such information on their webpage. But as it turns out, this is hardly the only information kept by the government. The Letters Patent, Bylaws, and Annual Reports for all not-for-profit corporations are kept on file, just ready for bloggers like myself to obtain them and publish them for all to see:

• Canadian Congress of Student Associations [PDF] - Letters Patent and Bylaws
• SuperConference (SuperCon) [PDF] - Letters Patent and Bylaws
• MoneyCon [PDF] - Letters Patent, Bylaws, and Annual Report
• Canadian Academic Roundtable [PDF] - Letter Patent, Bylaws, and Annual Report

CCSA and SuperCon do not have Annual Reports because they are too young, only having been incorporated in August 2005. In contrast, MoneyCon and Canadian Academic Roundtable have been incorporated long enough to have sent in an Annual Report - and to have changed their Board of Directors. Fortunately, the Letters Patent of these corporations clearly tell us who were the original directors of these two corporations.

The original directors of MoneyCon were:

• Amanda Aziz (who has been described earlier in another post)
• George Soule, National Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students. Mr. Soule is the former VP Finance of the Carleton University Students' Association.
• Jesse Greener, Ontario Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students. Mr. Greener is the former VP External of the Society of Graduate Students of the University of Western Ontario.

And the original directors of the Canadian Academic Roundtable were:

• Jeremy Salter (who has been described earlier in another post)
• Kelly Holloway [PDF], former Chairperson of the CFS National Graduate Caucus. Ms. Holloway was the former VP External of the Graduate Students' Union, University of Toronto. More recently, Ms. Holloway served as Chief Returning Officer for the 2006 Ryerson Students' Union general elections, and acquired no small amount of controversy for some of her decisions. Prior to her career in student politics, Ms. Holloway was a journalist for The Varsity, the student newspaper at the University of Toronto.
• Caitlin Brown, who has been described earlier. Ms. Brown coincidentally shares the same mailing address as Sarah Amyot.

Also of interest are the bylaws themselves. Considering that the CCSA conference coordinator, Adrienne de la Rosa, has appealed to potential conference-goers in the name of "democracy," one would - logically - assume that these bylaws would be the very epitome of democracy, yes?

Wrong. These bylaws are anything but democratic.

The membership of the CCSA, according to its bylaws, consists of students (note: not student associations) who have applied for membership, and whose application "has received the approval of the Board of Directors" (Bylaw 3.1). There is no obligation on the Board to accept, or not accept, any one application, nor is there even a mention that such persons should be delegates to a conference.

Moreover, this membership has very little power. They do not have the power to elect their Board of Directors - the bylaws specify that the Board is to consist of the Chairs of SuperCon, MoneyCon, and the Canadian Academic Roundtable (Bylaw 5.1). Nor do they have the power to see the Board's minutes, even if requested at a General Meeting, since the Bylaws specify that such minutes "shall not be available to the general membership of the corporation" (Bylaw 12.1). (Does your students' union have this sort of language in their Bylaws?) In fact, since the Board of Directors (all three of them!) has the full power to adopt a budget, hire staff, approve loans, and do everything else relating to the work of the CCSA, it is doubtful that these (hand-picked) members would, in fact, be given anything to do at all, other than show up.

What about the sub-conferences: SuperCon, MoneyCon, and the Canadian Academic Roundtable [CART]? Surely their Bylaws would be structured in a more democratic fashion.

But as it turns out, these organizations are even less democratic than those of the CCSA. The membership consists of the following positions:

• Chair
• British Columbia Representative
• Alberta Representative (BC and Alberta share one position in the MoneyCon Bylaws)
• Prairies Representative
• Ontario Representative
• Quebec Representative
• Atlantic Representative
• College Student Representative
• Graduate Student Representative

However, these positions are undefined. There is no obligation for the BC Representative to be from British Columbia, for example; nor is there any obligation for the sub-conference to even consult with the delegates who attend their conferences in determining who should be the next "BC Representative," etc. Elections for these positions take place at the Annual General Meeting, where the existing members (all eight or nine of them!) unilaterally choose their successors.

The Boards of Directors of the three sub-conferences also consist of three members: the Chair of the sub-conference in question, plus two other members (out of the seven or eight possible choices). In the case of SuperCon, these two members are elected at a General Meeting; but in the case of MoneyCon and CART, they are appointed by the Chair!

And again, as with the CCSA, these general membership of these sub-conferences - even though they are self-perpetuating and extremely small in number - have absolutely no right to view the minutes of meetings of their three-person Boards of Directors.

There are other problems. The MoneyCon Letters Patent and Bylaws - despite being approved by such eminent individuals as George Soule and Jesse Greener - contradict each other in regards to the location of the MoneyCon Head Office (Winnipeg according to the Letters Patent, Toronto according to the Bylaws). The use of male personal pronouns ("he," "his," "him") are used exclusively throughout all four sets of Bylaws - except in the CART and MoneyCon Bylaws outlining the responsibilities of the President of the respective corporation, where one will find "he," "she," and "she/he" used confusingly and randomly together.

So, a message to all attendees at the upcoming Canadian Congress of Student Associations (or whatever it's being called today): Know that you have absolutely no right to vote at the General Meetings of the CCSA, or of SuperCon, MoneyCon, or CART, unless expressly granted that privilege by the current office-holders; nor do you have any power to elect these leaders. If the leadership holds a "general meeting," and says that delegates have any power whatsoever (either on a one-vote-per-delegate basis or on a one-vote-per-student association basis) to determine the course of the organization - know that you are being deceived.

This is not your mother's Congress. Welcome to CCSA, Inc.