Matt Barter

By Sara Langer, PhD Candidate, Grenfell Campus, MUN

While the Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) is battling with its members about transparency and accountability, we must ask: where is the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) in all of this? To date, there has been no statement from CFS about the GSU situation. I must point out the irony of CFS’s silence and the silence of the GSU in the face of major budget cuts to graduate studies. It feels like both CFS and the GSU are failing us. It is time that we look at the umbrella organization that we, as members, are all a part of.

As the former CFS-NL Treasurer from 2016-2017, I saw the inner workings of our union at the provincial and federal levels, which left me concerned. It felt like there was no true advocacy. Besides a yearly meeting with federal representatives, they seemed to believe change would happen right away through rallies and national/provincial days of action. However, the government’s language is policy and numbers, which CFS severely lacks when “advocating” for free education. In 2022, there was a provincial day of action where students in Corner Brook marched to the Premier’s remote office at the Sir Richard Squires Building. The only problem: the Premier was not even in town at the time. 

It was revealed in 2015 that the national CFS organization had a secret account where over $200,000 was being siphoned into and withdrawn from, spanning 2010-2014. The executives conducted a forensic audit but never released the results. To date, those documents are still unavailable. 

I saw more concerning things as provincial treasurer: succession. CFS-NL has always had a stake in who was elected in the different unions across the province. Those elected to executive or councillor roles in their locals would have the opportunity to attend the CFS-NL AGM and run for three different executive positions: provincial chairperson, treasurer, and campaigns coordinator, with the chairperson being the only paid position. Except in 2015, when the treasurer position became a full-time paid position. Interestingly, in 2016, the person working as treasurer became the provincial chairperson, and they asked me to run for treasurer. It was only a full-time job for that one year, and then it went back to an unpaid position once the previous treasurer became chairperson and I stepped into my new role. 

As treasurer, I had no access to the budget, and my signing duties were given to the campaigns coordinator because I lived in Corner Brook and “it would be too much of a hassle to send something to sign, then wait for it to come back.” My only responsibility was to chair the budgetary committee at the provincial AGMs, which I had to defer to the accountant to lead because I was unfamiliar with anything that happened during that fiscal year. I did not know what the duties of the treasurer were when it was a paid position, but I was left with no real tasks.

In 2017, I wanted to run for provincial chairperson but was asked to step away so that the Grenfell Campus Student Union president could run. I was told to run for treasurer again only because they did not like the other candidate. I resigned shortly after to pursue my master’s, which, to my understanding, meant that the position was then acclaimed to someone else before the AGM. 

From the outside looking in, it just seems like CFS-NL supports their candidates of choice, prepping local union executives for provincial roles and who will carry the torch next. I highly doubt there is any real conspiracy, merely just people in elected positions helping their friends/people whose morals align with theirs, but then it gets into a grey area with “inherited debt.” I am not accusing any of the current GSU executives of any wrongdoing, but I do wonder if the inability to manage money for so long is a learned behaviour from the organization that also favours succession? Perhaps inherited actions that people continue to follow because that was just how it was done last time?

Regardless of my stance on dissolution, I find CFS to be problematic, and since dissolution would mean an exit from CFS, I felt I should share my experience. 

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