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Kwantlen Motion to Shame Canadian

Federation of Students Falls Apart at
Annual Meeting

Motion would have censured CFS for role in 2005-2006 Douglas scandal

By J.J. McCullough, Editor in Chief

A: attempt by the Kwantlen
University College students’ union
to publicly embarrass the Canadian
Federation of Students (CFS) over the
federation’s purported role in the 2005-
2006 financial scandal at the Douglas
Students’ Union failed to achieve its
intended result last week. After a series
of hardships, two severely watered-
down versions of a motion that sought
to condemn the recent history of CFS-
Douglas relations were defeated by a
vote of CFS delegates at the federation’s
annual general meeting.

As first reported in The
Other Press in October, the Kwantlen
Students Association had proposed a
lengthy motion for the annual general
meeting of the Canadian Federation
of Students which sharply criticized
the CFS for “propping up the Douglas
Students’ Union when it was grossly
mismanaged.”

Offering a thorough timeline
of events, the nearly 40-clause motion
described the controversial circumstances
in which the CFS’ BC branch made a
$200,000 loan to the Douglas student

union at a time when the organization’s
regular funding had been suspended by
the administration of Douglas College.
In response, the motion called for the
censuring of the entire CFS national
executive, as well as the implementation
of new accountability reforms to force
CFS executives to henceforth provide
written justification for any future loans
of over $1,000.

Though the KSA, which is
dominated by individuals deeply critical
of the CFS, had admitted that they did
not believe their motion was likely to
pass, officials within the student union
had expressed hope that their lengthy
motion would at least go “on the record”
at the CFS national meeting, and thus
embarrass the CFS simply by being
included on the agenda and debated.

This did not end up happening,
however. According to a KSA press
release, in the weeks leading up to the
CFS general meeting—which was held
from November 20 to 25 in Gatineau,
Quebec—much of the KSA’s motion
ended up being severely edited by CFS
president Amanda Aziz, who ruled
much of the resolution “out of order” for

containing “false statements.”

After the edits, the ensuing
approved motion was vastly shorter,
with the entire lengthy timeline removed.
Only the two main actionable items —the
request to censure the CFS executive and
the accountability reforms—remained,
now in the form of two separate
motions.

At the opening plenary session
of the CFS Gatineau meeting, the censure
half of the KSA motion ended up being
quickly voted downaftercertaindelegates
successfully moved for the resolution
to be “removed from consideration.”
In parliamentary protocol, a motion to
“remove from consideration” is one
of the quickest mechanisms to defeat
an issue without further discussion, as
it suggests that the very issue itself is
inappropriate to discuss.

The second half of the original
motion made it farther in the legislative
cycle, but was still ultimately voted
down at the final approval stage. Once
again, however, discussion was evidently
quite brief; a single KSA speaker spoke
in favour, after which the issue was put
to an immediate vote, which was then

defeated.

Titus Gregory, a noted anti-CFS activist
who is also a staff member at the
Kwantlen Student Association, said
that the results of the outcome of the
meeting “sadly” did not surprise him.

“It is not surprising that the
federation would dismiss controversial
motions without due consideration or
debate,” he said. Gregory authored
much of the original resolution himself,
and strongly criticized the way in which
the CFS ultimately edited his motion.
Without the proper context presented
by the background story of the original
resolution, he argued that no one at the
meeting could properly understand why
his organization’s censure and reform
proposals were necessary.

The Douglas’ Students Union,
for their part, voiced early objections
to the KSA motion well before the CFS
meeting. Back when the resolution was
still in the planning stage, the DSU
board voted unanimously to denounce
the proposal, arguing it was needlessly
embarrassing to their organization, and
too critical towards the CFS.

 

Giant Ecstas

By Garth McLennan, News Editor

O, Saturday, November 23, at around
6:00 PM, Jamie Alphonse Cadorette
was arrested at the Canadian-American
Peace Arch border crossing after it was
discovered that he was trying to smuggle
an astounding 93,000 ecstasy tablets.

The 93,000 pills weighed over 16
kilograms, or 35 pounds, and had a street
value estimated at $1.4 million.

The pills were exposed after
Cadorette’s 1986 Honda Civic was
searched at the border. Cadorette, a 20-
year-old British Columbian, and two
other men, Brian John Coll, 29, and
Anthony Kwan Drawhorn, 42, both of
whom were arrested with Cadorette,
appeared in US District Court on
Monday, November 26 in Seattle. Both
Coll and Drawhorn are Americans from
Los Angeles, California.

US customs and border protection
reported that the ecstasy capsules were
located in a speaker in the rear end of the
vehicle.

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y Shipment Stopped