Educating, engaging, and mobilizing efforts are key
Melissa Sundardas
News Editor
Farshad Azadian says the strike against tuition fees in Québec is inspiring, and that York students should be working towards organizing a similar movement.
An open letter by Azadian, a fifth-year psychology student, calls on the Canadian Federation of Students to take action and build a movement similar to the movement
in Québec, which has been ongoing since November 2011.
Lobbying done by the CFS over the past 20 years, with occasional demonstrations, has been ineffective, according to Azadian.
Two weeks ago, Azadian and other individuals tabled near Central Square. Within a few hours, they had 90 students sign the open letter on York’s Keele campus.
The open letter was posted online on May 7 and currently has a total of 291 signatures from students, various union members, citizens, and professionals across the country. It encourages the CFS and student union locals to “engage in a consistent and serious mobilizing effort to bring the Québec student movement to the rest of Canada.”
CFS Ontario chair Sandy Hudson says the open letter is a great idea, and they are working with some organizations to have discussions on Thursday, May 24 about student-solidarity options. Hudson says she is behind those Québec students who are striking.
“It’s fantastic how they have organized for over a year setting up faculty councils and mobilization committees to have votes at every single faculty council first before having a vote at their individual students’ unions and then having a vote at the broader students’ unions to ensure that this organizing was coming from the ground up,” Hudson says.
One of the things Azadian says he is pushing for is the CFS to begin a campaign of education and awareness around what is going on in Québec and the overall struggle around affordable
education.
“Through this campaign for awareness, we want it to lead up to a strike balloting in the fall for a provincial and nationwide student strike,” he says.
Agreeing with Azadian, Hudson says what is happening in Québec needs to happen in Ontario and across Canada, but students and unions need to work together to use the kind of strategizing that has been done in Québec for it to work elsewhere. She also says that there are a number of differences between Ontario and Québec.
“In Québec, if students call a student strike, they can’t get kicked out of classes for it,” she says. “Ontario students don’t have that protection,” she says. “That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t go on strike, it means that it’s something that we’ll have to consider when we’re organizing, and that’s something that students will have to consider. ‘How do we overcome that?’ has to be part of the conversation.”
Nevertheless, Azadian says these movements do not develop overnight and the York Federation of Students should begin to take action right away to get York students involved.
“YFS executives should set an example for student unions, for the CFS and other student unions across the country to begin mobilizing on its own and raising its own voice within the broader student
federations across Canada.”
Alastair Woods, YFS Vice-President of Campaigns and Advocacy, says as an organization, the YFS supports a variety of methods to make sure that the Ontario government
actually acts on reducing tuition fees.
“It’s something that we want to pick up in the fall and speak to our membership about in terms of what are the next steps that they want to take, what are the kind of actions they foresee working, and what kind of actions they would like to take,” says Woods.
Hudson says the Ontario government’s actions are “absolutely reprehensible,” and that they need to take more action against rising fees.
Whether students have been politically active in the past or not, Azadian says there is an urgency to “support our brothers and sisters in Québec and also spread the movement across Canada, so we can fight for an affordable education system.”
