My thoughts on the 2012 SFUO elections results and future reforms

Hey everyone! It's been awhile!

I've received a couple emails from readers pointing out that I've been noticeably absent throughout the past month or so. I apologize to my faithful readership but school has undoubtedly taken up nearly every waking moment of my time. Since I've been absent for an extended period of time, you can forgive me if this post is a little longer than usual! I've got A LOT on my mind!

My thoughts on the 2012 SFUO elections results

So, now that that's out of the way, let me start by saying I was extremely pleased with the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa's (SFUO) elections! What I will call the "pro-Canadian Federation of Students" (CFS) team was, by all accounts, OBLITERATED on elections' night. I say that because out of the four races in which there were two or more people running (President, VP Student Affairs, VP University Affairs and VP Social), only one of their team members was elected. The other two team members had it pretty easy as they ran unopposed. This team consisted of Presidential candidate Amalia Savva, VP Finance candidate Adam Gilani, VP Student Affairs candidate Tasha Peters, VP University Affairs candidate Elizabeth Kessler, VP Social candidate Marie-Claude Noël and VP Communications candidate Anne-Marie Roy. It just goes to show how allowing candidates to work together in teams doesn't always assure a swift victory for that said team. To be honest, I didn't think it would turn out the way it did. 

Before I go any further, I would like to share with you my election predictions (which I finalized on upon arriving at 1848 on Election results' night). 

Voter turnout: 17.6%

President: Savva by 1.2%

VP Social: Spiteri by 5%

VP University Affairs: Kessler by 30%

VP Student Affairs: Peters by 8%

VP Finance: 95% Yes

VP Communication: 98% Yes

U-Pass Referendum: 59% No

Photo Credits: La Rotonde © 2012 (Facebook Group link while it lasts)

I'm glad that Ethan Plato (2364 votes or 51%) and Jozef Spiteri (2218 votes or 55%) pulled off what I will characterize as an "upset" by winning the positions of president and VP Social respectively. It should also be noted that Plato and Spiteri ran as a team as well. Presidential candidates Amalia Savva (the leader of the pro-CFS team; 1778 votes or 38%) and Philippe Mulet (an independent; 538 votes or 11%) did not do as well as I thought they would. This was Savva's third election campaign in which she ran for the SFUO presidency. Her first kick at the can came in 2010 when Tyler Steeves was finally elected (after having himself ran twice before for the SFUO presidency unsuccessfully). Then, last year, Savva faced a formidable opponent in Nathan Boivin who, in the end, lost by only 53 votes. It's also worth noting that Savva received more votes this year (1778 votes) than she received in her successful bid last year (1676 votes). Spiteri's opponent and incumbent VP Social Marie-Claude Noël seemed to be out of ideas during the debates. She read from a prepared speech which was filled with nice, comforting words but had little substance.

I was even more shocked to learn that Kate Hudson had beat out the outright favourite, Tasha Peters for VP Student Affairs. I honestly expected Peters to win without much trouble. So, in the end, only 50% of the pro-CFS team was elected with two out of three candidates running unopposed: Anne-Marie Roy (3645 Yes votes) and Adam Gilani (3593 Yes votes) were elected to the positions of VP Communications and VP Finance respectively. Please note that I have communicated with Julia McDonald (SFUO Chief Electoral Officer) and Crystel Hajjar (SFUO Chief Returning Officer) requesting that the number of spoiled/disallowed votes for each position be made available as well as the number of No votes for the positions which were uncontested. These numbers have yet to be added (Friday March 2, 2012).

UPDATE (Wednesday March 7, 2012): Julia McDonald replied to my inquiry on Tuesday March 6, 2012:

Hi Brandon,

Below are the numbers you requested.

VP FINANCE
GILANI, Adam: Yes votes 3593; No votes 857

VP COMMUNICATIONS
ROY, Anne-Marie: Yes votes 3645; No votes 773

It is not possible for me to provide you with percentages as it would be far
too time consuming to determine the number of spoils for individual races.
This is because of the way the counting machines functioned.

And as an aside, in light of your previous email, I want to mention that I
will bring to the BOA's attention the option of putting my final elections
report online.

All the best,

Julia McDonald
Directrice Generale des Elections / Chief Electoral Officer
Fédération étudiante de l'Université d'Ottawa - Student Federation of the
University of Ottawa
309-85 University Pvt.
Ottawa, ON     K1N 8Z4
613-562-5800 x. 2625

Lastly, VP University Affairs incumbent Elizabeth Kessler managed to squeeze passed her opponent, Christopher Clarke, by a mere 198 votes. This year, Kessler, a member of the pro-CFS team and the SFUO's representative to the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario, fumbled on a major issue which will likely leave uOttawa students with $70 less in their pockets. She was responsible for negotiating with the City of Ottawa council and OC Transpo with regards to the Universal Bus Pass (U-Pass). A group of students from uOttawa and Carleton University, which included Kessler, made a submission back in November 2011 (November 16 to be more precise) to the City of Ottawa's Transit Commission. During that meeting, the group of students presented a commissioned study (prepared by two PhD students from Carleton University) which refuted the City's numbers when it came to the price of a revenue neutral U-Pass (at the price of $145/semester, the City of Ottawa subsidizes the U-Pass to the tune of about $3 million). The City claimed that in order to eliminate this taxpayer subsidy, OC Transpo must charge $180/semester ($360 U-Pass; an increase of $70). To make a long story short, the students were asked some tough questions by some of the Commission's members and, in my opinion, demonstrated that they hadn't done their homework. Questions such as "Is this information that you've presented in the report based on empirical evidence?" were met with unclear answers from the student delegation. You can listen to this meeting via the City of Ottawa's website (jump to 42:22 for the student delegations' presentation).

When Kessler was asked during the elections' debate why she hadn't informed students about that meeting, she insisted that it was the student media's fault for not having covered the meeting. The "commissioned study" can be found here. I also covered that Transit Commission meeting in a post that can be found here. It should be noted that this report was never made available to students on the SFUO website. I finally found the document on the Carleton University Graduate Students' Association's website. Although Clarke brought some new ideas to the table, his spoken French wasn't where it needed to be. Add on the fact that he took a few long pauses during the debate and you begin to understand why he was ultimately defeated.

Future Reforms Possible?

I would now like to deal with some issues that, in my opinion, should be looked at in terms of reforming the SFUO and the SFUO board of administration (SFUO BOA) which could have become very contentious had there been any major complaints filed and later appealed. I'm referring to the composition of the Elections Committee (a three-person body which is tasked with hearing appeals of rulings made by Chief electoral officer. The Elections Committee members were Sarah Jayne King (current SFUO VP Finance, current CFS-O Treasurer, CFS-O Chairperson-Elect), Paige Galette (current SFUO VP Communications, current Francophone student representative on the CFS national executive) and Jesse Root (Amalia Savva's former campaign manager). Does anybody else see a problem here? Luckily, as far as I'm aware, no major issues have arose from the election campaign and the Elections Committee wasn't required to rule on any serious complaints. Regardless, there should be no way that people with such obvious biases should be allowed to sit on the Elections Committee in the future. When your only defense is "There is nothing in the SFUO Constitution that states that I'm not allowed to sit on the Elections Committee", you begin to wonder what this person's motives really are. This is a major problem which should be avoided at all costs in future elections. We have seen what could happen in 2011 (disqualification of Tristan Dénomée and instalment of Sarah Jayne King as VP Finance without a by-election) and in 2010 (resignation of SFUO Chief Electoral Officer, Julien de Bellefeuille; then-SFUO President Seamus Wolfe, also a member of the Elections Committee, became both judge and jury when it was decided that a replacement CEO would not be hired).

I do hope that Plato was sincere when he brought up the fact that he would be open to conducting a review into the way the SFUO is governed (i.e.: SFUO BOA, electoral administration, etc.). Now, for starters, the SFUO does not have a conflict of interest policy. Such a policy, if implemented correctly, could potentially alleviate many contentious issues which have arisen throughout the years (that I have been very critical of on this blog and at BOA meetings). Even though it should go without saying that elected officials should always act with the utmost integrity and be held to the highest standards of ethics and morality, this has sadly not always been the case, in my opinion, of the SFUO BOA nor of the SFUO executive in the past.
My recommendation: That the SFUO BOA task the Policy and By-laws Committee with reviewing various conflict of interest policies that have been implemented by other elected bodies (City of Ottawa, City of Toronto, other student unions, etc.) and present a report outlining its recommendations and that the SFUO BOA (finally) implement a conflict of interest policy. 

The SFUO is a member of the Canadian Federation of Students. This organization meets twice a year at the national level and twice a year at the provincial level for its respective general meetings. The SFUO executive and staff attend these meetings. If the reason for attending these conferences that members of the SFUO executive attend throughout the year is to bring various student unions together and learn from others' experiences, then the new SFUO executive should take the opportunity to learn from others and actually bring those ideas back to our campus. This would be much more beneficial to the student body at large than simply stating "I attended such and such a conference and it was great!" as was the case during the last SFUO BOA meeting on Sunday February 26, 2012.
My recommendation: I would strongly suggest that each executive member prepare a summary of their activities during the conferences that they attend as representatives of the SFUO and that they present a  comprehensive report to the BOA outlining the things they learnt. 

Another issue that has only recently been brought to my attention is the fact that the uOttawa Archives has in its possession a number of SFUO records. Documents from past executives have been collected and are easily accessible during regular business hours in the basement of the Campus Pharmacy building. It is my understanding that it has been difficult for the uOttawa Archives to obtain documents from the SFUO in the past few years. If true, this is both bizarre and troubling. The SFUO has very little available on its website in terms of institutional memory. For example, if I wanted to find out who the SFUO president was in 1990, I can't simply go onto the SFUO website to get this information. I must then search on Google to see if such information was ever documented on a blog or elsewhere on the World Wide Web. And if I do manage to find this information, it becomes a question of "How am I to verify that this information is actually correct?" I'm obviously not familiar with what kind of record keeping/archiving system the SFUO currently has in place, but it seems to me that the uOttawa Archives should be receiving certain documentation every year from the outgoing SFUO executive in order to keep at least some of the SFUO's fascinating institutional memory alive and accessible for years to come.
My recommendation: Add "She will, at the conclusion of each mandate, provide any and all relevant SFUO documentation produced throughout the year to the University of Ottawa Archives" under Section 3.3.1 (SFUO President Duties) of the SFUO Constitution. 

These are only some of the things that I've had on my mind and thought it would be useful to write them out in hopes that anyone who was elected this year might be inspired by these recommendations. Do you have any recommendations on how to improve the governance of the SFUO? Do you think my recommendations have merit...? are useless...? If you have any thoughts on this or on anything else which pertains to student politics, I want to hear from you! Leave you comments below!