These 3 defederation votes all had record high turnouts for those institutions вЂ“ higher than any vote or referendum they had ever had on any topic, including joining CFS вЂ“ and the students overwhelmingly voted to defederate. This is exactly what played out with our sister student unions from McGill and Concordia, who held defederation votes in 2010 in response to what they perceived to be the undemocratic practices of CFS, and to the hostility and dismissal that they received at the 2009 AGM when they tried to put forward reforms as member locals of CFS. This secrecy and consolidation of power leads to legitimate criticisms, in the face of these criticisms CFS moves towards greater secrecy and a greater consolidation of power in order to protect itself from these supposed attacks. This is self-defeating and self-perpetuating. It is through this tendency towards secrecy and consolidating power that we alienate our members вЂ“ especially those in the left-wing вЂ“ and we provide fuel to the arguments of those few people who actually wish to undermine the student movement. The truth is that CFS is its own worst enemy in this regard. Even in this AGM, myself and others who have put forward critiques of the status quo have been called right-wingers and have been accused of trying to break down the student movement. There is also a deeply embedded paranoia of being public about our internal practices, often justified by the specter of a right-wing attack of our organization. The CFS runs in a representative democratic structure, where power exists in the hands of executives, increasingly at the provincial and national levels, and decisions are significantly influenced by the opinions of long-term staff. If you are interested in learning more about these interactions, I would recommend that you look for documents, which are available online, such as вЂњSolidarity for their own goodвЂќ and вЂњThe CFS is broken and can't be fixedвЂќ. These conversations have historically been met with hostility, aggression and ad-hominem attacks. The perceived top-down, undemocratic nature of CFS has been a long-standing concern of local executives and members for years, and has been raised at multiple AGMs. Partially because of the Quebec student strike, the issue of student association structures and decision-making processes has become a recent topic of conversation вЂ“ but this is not the first time this conversation has happened. The nature of our organizational democracy is a political debate that needs to be had.

Contrary to what I've heard many times throughout this and other AGMs, democracy is not just a buzz word. The first thing I would like to address is the issue of democracy. But we need to have frank discussions, not just about specific campaigns or the production of materials, but the over-arching tactical and political orientation of the CFS. We have access to campuses across the country and if we decide to, can have a significant effect on the strategies employed by the Canadian student movement as a whole.

Cfs coop